Speed to Value: My Playbook How to Supercharge The Flow of Value to Your Customer.

“The goal of a startup is not to build a product. The goal is to figure out the right product to build.”

~Eric Ries, Author & Entrepreneur, “The Lean Startup” (2011)

I launched my first product when I was six years old.

My family’s house sat on a hill overlooking Lake Victoria in Tanzania. The sunsets there were unlike anything I’ve seen since—red as fire, partially due to smoke from kitchen fires that burned all day in the villages. Just offshore were Pig Island and Goat Island, so named because of the wild pigs and goats that supposedly roamed them. I visited those islands a lot as a kid, and I never saw a single pig or goat.

Our house was next to the path where locals walked to fetch water. I figured these people were thirsty, and I had a solution: Kool-Aid.

I raided my parents’ stash—sent to us by mail across the Atlantic—and set up my first “startup” on that hill. Sugar water was free (to me), so my cost of goods was zero. I was six years old, and I thought I’d cracked the code to a profitable business.

The Reality Check Nobody bought it. They didn’t want sugar water. My price—2 cents—was laughed at. Eventually, I watered down the Kool-Aid, my dad bought a cup, and my friends showed up to drink the rest. I jingled a few coins in my pocket, but I didn’t exactly retire on my earnings.

It was my first lesson in value.

I think about that story often because, in product design, we still make the same mistakes I made on that dusty hill in Tanzania. We build something we think people want. We slap a price on it. We hope the world sees its brilliance.

But that’s not how you build products people love.

Over the years, I’ve launched products for everyone from startups to household names like Herman Miller, Oracle, and Scholastic. I’ve founded SaaS companies. I’ve coached product teams. Across every successful launch, there’s been one consistent truth:

Your job as a creator is not to build features. Your job is to unlock the flow of value for your customers.

Here’s what I mean and how you can do it.

Step 1: Map the Value

“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

~Reid Hoffman, Co-founder of LinkedIn, “Masters of Scale” (2017)

Before you write a single line of code or design a single pixel, ask yourself: How does value flow from us to our customers?

When we built Lead Scout, my previous startup, we thought the value was in sending mail to prospective customers. We mapped the journey like this:

See a house → Add a pin to the map → Send a postcard → Leads call you. The infrastructure was slick. A partnership deal helped us scale. But something didn’t feel right. When we talked to our customers—contractors—they weren’t lighting up about sending mail. What they really valued was getting leads.

So we mapped the gaps. We pivoted. We focused on enabling door knocking, adding simple tools to get contractors face-to-face with homeowners. That shift unlocked the true flow of value.

Step 2: Speed to Value

“Make something people want… is the fundamental problem. If you die, it’s probably because you didn’t make something people wanted.”

~Paul Graham, Co-founder of Y Combinator, “How to Start a Startup” (2014)

The first version of any feature should be the fastest version of the truth. I call this an MVT—a Minimal Viable Test.

At Lead Scout, a partner approached us about breaking into solar. They wanted us to build a tool that integrated municipal data and surfaced homeowners’ utility costs. It would have taken months to build. Instead, we ran a test:

We printed solar surveys. We emailed Stripe payment links to users. We called contractors personally with the results. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t automated. But we learned what we needed to know: most solar leads went cold. That insight saved us from building a bloated feature no one would use.

When you focus on speed to value, you don’t just save time—you give your team clarity.

Step 3: Play Moneyball

“The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work.”

~Paul Buchheit, Creator of Gmail, “Founders at Work” (2007)

Sometimes, unlocking value means knowing your numbers.

Mail was our highest-cost feature at Lead Scout. It had tight margins, required high-touch support, and made acquisition harder because we had to convince customers to spend more. But users who didn’t send mail? They were profitable, low-maintenance, and stuck around longer.

So we cut mail.

For a season, we focused exclusively on the high-value, high-margin parts of our business. It wasn’t flashy, but it gave us the breathing room to scale sustainably.

How to Start Unlocking Value Today

1. Map the flow of value. What does your customer truly care about?
2. Identify gaps and friction. Where are you slowing value down?
3. Run an MVT. What’s the simplest, fastest version of the truth?
4. Know your numbers. Which parts of your product drive the most value—and the most profit?

“The best founders don’t start with a solution, they start with a problem worth solving.”

~Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark, “Masters of Scale Summit” (2022)

The products I’ve worked on that reached millions of users didn’t succeed because we shipped more features. They succeeded because we focused relentlessly on value.

That’s the playbook.

Now go unlock it.