Don't solve distribution problems with your features. The result is overwhelming backlogs, obscure customer requests, and a complete breakdown of the organization. What is going wrong?

You might build for the same customer but with time their maturity changes. If you're familiar with the "crossing the chasm" graph below then you know the hardest step is from early adopters to early majority users.

The most common explanations for it are:

"Early adopters don't care about price, the quality that much, they need bleeding edge features, the newest stuff."

"For the Early Majority, you need to focus on the quality, unit economics (and therefore price) and a broader feature coverage"

That leaves out the most important difference between the two:

Early adopters and their different behavior

Early adopters are not only a small portion of your market. They *behave* differently. They not only want different features they also seek out new solutions actively. And that can go through all segments of B2B too. You have a CMO in a big corp on the bleeding edge of Martech, trying to level up their org. They are early adopters

There might not be many but they are there. And they will actively search for new solutions. That's why you can push a perfect distribution focus to the side at the beginning and focus on creating a great product. Prove that you can retain them (finding PMF) and you're off to the races.

In other words, focus on the product like a maniac first.

The party is over. Hangover is here

Suddenly trying to address more of the same aka "scaling" means the party suddenly stops because of a lot of unfun stuff:

• Legal

• Scaling infrastructure

• Geographical oddities

• HR problems

• Thrashing

• Defending existing growth

This is especially relevant for ANY product-led business. Shifting gears from PMF to GTM will hurt.

It's not your competition. It's whether you can stop your organization from breaking down while you try to build your product suddenly for a majority that's looking for a sustainable, stable solution.

And for that, you need to expand what you understand under "product". It's including the post and pre-experience, not your features.

Welcome to Product-Led Growth, the ride is bumpy but fun.