Internal debates and market studies are noise. The clearest signal to build a new product is when a potential customer explicitly states they will pay for a simplified solution to a complex problem. This removes ambiguity and confirms a genuine, urgent need.
When faced with intense public scrutiny unrelated to the product, Astronomer's leadership focused all discussions on employee support and customer assurance. This internal focus prevented any employee or customer churn, demonstrating that the core business can remain stable by ignoring external noise.
Astronomer's customers for their Clickstream product were more fascinated by its Airflow backend than the product's value proposition. This overwhelming interest validated their pivot to a managed Airflow service, revealing a hidden, more urgent market need.
When selling to enterprises, founders can feel intimidated asking for large contract values. A powerful yardstick is to frame the price relative to a fully-loaded engineer's salary (e.g., 'is this worth half an engineer to you?'). This contextualizes the cost against a familiar, significant budget item.
Initially, Astronomer priced against the cost of hiring an engineer for analytics tasks. As customers adopted Airflow for critical operational workloads (e.g., regulatory reporting), the pricing conversation shifted. The value is no longer saving a salary, but preventing catastrophic revenue or compliance failures.
To break through the noise, Astronomer used a subject line that simultaneously qualified the recipient and created intrigue. This direct, almost challenging, approach proved highly effective in capturing the attention of their specific target audience—Airflow users—and drove successful email campaigns.
Your first customers require obsessive, daily interaction to ensure the product works for them. Astronomer's founder spoke with their first managed Airflow customer four times a day for two months. This grueling process is essential for ironing out roadblocks and achieving product-market fit.
Unable to afford company t-shirts, the early Astronomer team would research a customer's college major and gift them a relevant used book. This hyper-personalized, low-cost action demonstrated genuine care and attention to detail, building a stronger brand connection than generic merchandise ever could.