Investors often try to engage founders before a formal fundraising process begins to "get to know you." However, Jack Altman advises that unless an investor presents a concrete term sheet, these early conversations are merely attempts to control the process on their timeline. A true preemption is an offer, not a meeting.
While building one-off features for large clients is risky, their requests can be a leading indicator for the market. Lattice CEO Jack Altman notes that like Shopify at Stripe, these clients can push your product in directions that prove valuable for many future customers, making it a strategic bet.
Jack Altman states that truly "obviously great" talent has better options than joining an unproven startup as an early employee. Therefore, the key to building a stellar founding team is to find people who are exceptionally talented but whose greatness is not yet legible to the broader market.
A founder selling a future vision is a tool to gauge market appetite and guide the product roadmap. Jack Altman did this at Lattice. However, he prevented his sales team from selling features that didn't exist, as it creates a transactional expectation that can damage customer trust and brand reputation if not met.
Lattice CEO Jack Altman argues that when a product works, it works fast. A strong market pull is usually immediate and obvious. If you constantly feel that you're just "one more feature" away from success, it's more likely a sign of a fundamental problem, not a minor feature gap.
Even with a productive sales team, founders should periodically run sales conversations. Jack Altman continued doing sales calls to stay connected to the market. It's the most direct way to understand what resonates with customers, what feels hard, and what lights them up, providing an unfiltered view of product-market fit.