Why Every Startup Should Separate Vision from Product Pitch | Why Customers Nodding Doesn't Mean They'll Buy | The Hidden Danger of Broad Positioning Too Early | Brutal Truth About Building What Developers Want | Simon Rohrbach, CEO & Co-Founder at Plain
Stop pitching the end state. Sell the smallest step that proves you can provide value.
This episode dives in on how to decouple a north‑star company vision from a scrappy, testable product pitch that customers can adopt today. You’ll learn how to use positioning as your lever - choose sharper category language, cut scope to true table stakes, and listen for unsolicited buy signals- to move from zero traction to real pull.
On top, you’ll learn what the slowest, costliest way to validate an idea is; how to identify table stakes; and the signals that tell you when to broaden your ICP.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
- 01:35 - From “Stripe for Support” to reality: what we missed
- 03:48 - API‑first exposes every seam; validation speed plummets
- 07:59 - The worst enterprise pitch: “engineers, please write more code”
- 11:23 - Name your category—or wear Zendesk/Intercom’s handcuffs
- 16:06 - Set true table stakes; timebox the MVP ruthlessly
- 21:02 - Buy‑now signals: users volunteer payment without a hard sell
- 23:49 - Ethical pre‑selling: describe the future, then sprint to it
- 25:12 - Turn case studies into copy—speak customers’ exact language
- 27:38 - Vertical → use case → market: DevTools → Technical Support → B2B
- 30:54 - Outrun feature spreadsheets with a customer collaboration thesis
- 40:41 - What collaboration means: Slack escalations, issue trackers, shared context
- 47:15 - Map features to FRT, CSAT, retention—not “shiny UI” claims
- 50:34 - Homepage discipline: kill vanity metrics and shortcut bragging
- 52:21 - 70/30 rule: discovery + founder conviction against higher‑order shifts
Creators and Guests
Host
Pascal Unger
Co-founder / Managing Partner at focal.vc We lead pre-seeds in North America with up to $1M: We exclusively back AI native software startups at the very start. Thereafter, we help them get off the ground better and faster, supported by a network > 200 GTM executives. That's our singular, unwavering focus.