Founders must consider their sales motion (e.g., PLG vs. enterprise sales-led) when designing the product. A product built for one motion won't sell effectively in another, potentially forcing a costly redesign. This concept extends "product-market fit" to "product-market-sales fit."

Visionary founders often try to sell their entire, world-changing vision from day one, which confuses buyers. To gain traction, this grand vision must be broken down into a specific, digestible solution that solves an immediate, painful problem. Repeatable sales come from a narrow focus, not a broad promise.

Danny Meyer classifies ventures as "hardbacks" (unique, location-specific, not for replication) or "paperbacks" (concepts customers make essential, creating an obligation to scale). This framework helps founders decide which products should remain bespoke versus those that are ready for mass-market expansion.

Avoid the trap of building features for a single customer, which grinds products to a halt. When a high-stakes customer makes a specific request, the goal is to reframe and build it in a way that benefits the entire customer base, turning a one-off demand into a strategic win-win.

Saying yes to numerous individual client features creates a 'complexity tax'. This hidden cost manifests as a bloated codebase, increased bugs, and high maintenance overhead, consuming engineering capacity and crippling the ability to innovate on the core product.

Many B2B companies begin by customizing software for one client, then stacking new custom projects for subsequent clients. They believe they are building a product, but are actually creating a complex, unscalable monolith that is difficult to maintain and evolve.