This is a special episode from our new show “Engineering Founders” - Should you build B2C or B2B? What about implementing a top-down or a bottoms up sales strategy? How do you think about pricing? These are many of the dilemmas early founders face in the early stages. We sit down with Abi Noda to explore his experiences co-founding DX and Pull Panda and examine the differences, trade-offs and considerations behind building for consumer vs. B2B, pricing, early sales and product adoption strategies! For more episodes of Engineering Founders, subscribe here: https://engineering-founders.simplecast.com/

P.S. The Engineering Leadership Podcast will return after the winter holidays on January 3rd!

ABOUT ABI NODA

Abi Noda is the CEO and co-founder of DX, the world's first developer experience management platform. He was previously the CEO and founder of Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub in 2019. At GitHub he led research collaborations with Dr. Nicole Forsgren, McKinsey, and Microsoft Research, which was the impetus for founding DX.

"It's really good to try to sell starting on day one. That's probably, in my opinion, the best way to validate an idea, a B2B idea, is to try and go sell it and by sell it I mean literally go get money for like pre-committed customers. So it really de-risks a huge component of, I think, why these types of businesses fail, which is they just aren't able even identify, reach and successfully convert buyers.”

- Abi Noda   

ABOUT DX

DX is the world’s first developer experience management platform, helping organizations measure and improve top drivers of developer productivity and engagement.

DX is designed by leading software engineering researchers, providing science-backed metrics, workflows, and education that empower teams to improve.

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SHOW NOTES:

• Abi's journey founding DX and Pull Panda (3:07)
• Building your business as a side-project for consumers vs. enterprise software (6:07)
• If you just got laid off and want to start a business, you need to hear this (10:02)
• The best way to validate a B2B idea (12:44)
• Differences with how you talk about your product in a competitive vs. uncompetitive market (15:58)
• How to think about pricing for bottoms-up or top-down sales motion (17:17)
• Choosing the right persona to pursue as customers (20:58)
• How experience at large companies can help you understand how to approach enterprise product adoption (24:44)
• Investor expectations with bottoms-up/top-down sales and identifying ICPs (32:06)
• Incentivizing users to adopt new features (34:12)
• Closing deals and getting to the implementation stage (37:51)
• How Abi maximized advisor relationships (40:04)
• Rapid fire questions (45:27)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Lenny Rachitsky’s Newsletter - a weekly advice column about product, growth, and your career.
• 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer’s comprehensive business strategy guide centered around power and the conditions that create the potential for persistent differential returns.
• Nail It Then Scale It - Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom’s guide to increasing success and reducing risk when launching a high-growth company.