Helping a founding team discover what to build first

Kynd is a cybersecurity startup that helps organisations understand and manage cyber risk.

I joined Kynd while the company was still defining its first product.

Like many early-stage startups, the founders had a clear understanding of the problem they wanted to solve. The challenge was turning that understanding into a product customers could actually use.

Over ten days, we explored product concepts, mapped the customer onboarding journey and worked through the assumptions that would shape the first version of the product. Ultimately, we were trying to answer a deceptively simple question:

What should we build first?

Deciding what to build next is often a question of prioritisation. You have customers, data and an existing product to guide you.

Deciding what to build first is different. You’re starting with little more than a problem worth solving and a set of assumptions about how it might be solved.

It’s a different kind of product challenge, and one I’ve found myself returning to throughout my career.

Curious how experiences like this have shaped my approach?

Many of the principles that guide how I build products were forged by helping teams answer questions like this.