8 Product Hurdles Every Founder Must Clear - This PM-Turned-Founder Shares His Playbooks
TL;DR: Ryan Glasgow spent years as a founding product manager at startups like Vurb and Weebly before launching Sprig, a product research platform. His journey from PM to founder revealed critical gaps in how product teams accessed customer insights, especially at scale. Glasgow's approach to building Sprig was methodical: he used Anthony Ulwick's outcome-driven innovation framework to identify underserved needs among product managers at high-growth companies. Rather than building for everyone, he deliberately segmented to find where existing solutions fell short - discovering that PMs at larger companies (500K+ users) had the most acute pain around accessing qualitative data. His early product strategy centered on doing things that don't scale - building only the SDK while manually handling survey creation, configuration, and data analysis. This consultative approach let him validate that his solution delivered on promised outcomes before investing in automation. For sales, he learned to 'submarine' - breaking large purchasing decisions into small, contained decisions to reduce prospect pressure. The article emphasizes that founders should focus on discovering product-market fit through understanding customer outcomes rather than just measuring whether they've achieved it. Glasgow recommends using the outcome-driven innovation framework to define PMF before building, and continuously refining ICP through cold outreach rather than relying on warm networks.
Key Insights
- Use outcome-driven innovation to identify underserved outcomes before writing code - survey target customers on importance vs satisfaction to find sweet spots
- Cold email strangers to validate demand - if you're truly solving a problem, people you don't know will spend their valuable time helping you
- Build only what you cannot do manually - deliver everything else as a service to validate the solution before automating
- Submarine your sales calls by stating the contained decision needed at the start of each meeting, reducing pressure on prospects
- Discovering product-market fit through understanding customer outcomes is more valuable than just measuring whether you have PMF
Actionable Takeaways
- List 20-40 outcomes your target customers want, then survey them on importance and satisfaction to find underserved opportunities
- Cold email potential customers outside your network - their willingness to spend time validates problem severity
- Document a playbook for each sales meeting: questions to ask, topics to cover, and the specific decision needed at the end
- When expanding products, stay within your category and look at adjacent jobs your customers are using other vendors to solve
- Ask customers hard questions like 'What's one feature you wouldn't be disappointed if we removed?' to surface true priorities
Principles Validated (29)
Embed persistent branding on user-generated content that will be shared externally
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Break large purchase decisions into contained mini-decisions to reduce prospect pressure
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Leverage investor networks for warm enterprise introductions with specific targeted asks
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Accept failure quickly and move on rather than trying to save failing ventures
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Document everything as processes and systems
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Own growth personally before hiring - delegation is a slow way to learn
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Complex B2B products can take years to reach revenue - patience required
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Work at company adjacent to your goals to learn before starting
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Build minimal single-feature products rather than complex multi-feature apps
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Pivot from sales-led to product-led growth when hitting capacity constraints
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Rebundle from feature to solution when enterprise buyers think in categories, not point products
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Launch with one core feature that delivers the aha moment, even if everything else is incomplete
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Start with narrow AI use case that works today to fund expansive future vision
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Rebrand when the company outgrows the original product scope to signal platform evolution
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Start as done-for-you service, then automate the proven process into software
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
True validation requires risking rejection—diluted validation avoids the moment someone must commit or say no
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Pitch strangers instead of friends to get unbiased validation signals
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Measure customer problem importance against solution satisfaction to find underserved opportunities
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Deliver solution manually before coding to iterate without technical constraints
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Use design partners as co-builders with weekly feedback sessions for months before public launch
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Organic growth and emotional reactions indicate true product-market fit
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)
Validate demand manually before building expensive automation
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig)