Product-focused founders often underestimate the difficulty of go-to-market. According to Deliverect's co-founder, building a product is relatively straightforward compared to the challenge of building a distribution engine to get it into customers' hands.
Before writing code, the founder acted as the "automation," manually inputting orders for the first 100 restaurants. This Wizard of Oz approach validated demand and the workflow with zero development cost, allowing for an instant launch.
Don't just offer discounts to early adopters. Frame it as a partnership where, in exchange for a lower price, customers must become a reference case, do a video testimonial, and provide warm introductions to their network.
Deliverect expanded globally at a breakneck pace, opening 10 offices in one quarter. This "land grab" strategy ensured they competed for early adopters everywhere at once, preventing local competitors from establishing a stronghold before they arrived.
Deliverect's founder knew from experience that POS companies couldn't build an effective delivery integration layer, contrary to what investors believed. This non-obvious, domain-specific insight was their core strategic advantage and moat.
For an infrastructure business, the existential AI threat is not being replaced. It's having another company build the valuable "intelligence layer" on top of your platform, commoditizing your core service into a low-margin "dumb pipe."
While MVPs should be simple, once strong product-market fit is validated, you must build a scalable architecture. The founder learned that you won't have time to refactor code later when hypergrowth begins, which cripples the business.
Giving your product away for free seems like an easy way to get early feedback, but it's counterproductive. Unpaid users feel guilty complaining. Charging a fee empowers them to act like a real customer, providing the critical feedback needed to improve.