TryHackMe (THM) is at a stage where the bottleneck is product & design - what used to take a team of 10 engineers can be done by 1. Product taste has always been important, but I struggle to see how it gets accelerated at the same rate as engineering when creativity is critical and taste is built over years.

I think building a truly great product is really difficult, but I think it’ll be down to: brand, product taste, and user distribution. All comes from a small talent dense team. I could write an entire article on this, but for another day.

Some of our PMs submit code now - using Cursor to fix small changes in the product (reviewed by an engineer), but also to streamline creating Jira tickets with less communication overhead, making it clearer for engineers to pick up and build.

I hate the word “vibe coding” as it implies AI slop (or a not-finished or early product), yet models are becoming so good soon I can see a world where we don’t code anymore. I prefer “AI crafted”.

The way we do development product is changing - refinement is pointless in many cases - why spend so much time planning, when you can come to the call with the prototype developed. Should product refinement now be only for engineers, where they review together and test, vs plan?

I think in the future product managers will be more “full stack” - doing user research, analysis, design, and development. Here are some examples from our team that support this theory (none of them wrote 1 line of code):

• Our Head of Product built a Chrome extension - replacing an app he loved that shut down - with a database, Google OAuth, email notifications, and AI-powered article summarisation.

  

• Our Head of Engineering built a fully working web game in 10 hours (no Unity)

  

• Our Head of Content built a multiplayer role-based game simulator.

  

We even use a data tool now where we its: “prompt to analysis”. Our many terrabytes of user analytics can be queried, so everyone can do light analysis.

To engineers - I don’t think you’ll be replaced, but as I wrote before: “AI won’t replace you, but someone using it will”. Complex apps still require technical oversight. I also think we’ll see a rise of product engineers, which is why I love engineers with founder backgrounds or experience at true PLG companies.

To be clear for those at THM reading this - we won’t be downsizing. Team size stays the same, but we expect higher productivity. It might also mean fewer engineers per PM (e.g. 1 PM + 3 engineers becomes 1 PM + 1 engineer) - perhaps we hire more PMs and designers. It means engineers will also see more of an impact of their work!

Proof of X 30 person team claim (from their Head of Product) here.

We’ve introduced quarterly performance reviews (rolled out to product and engineering first), that stack ranks the entire team from top to bottom. The formula for stack ranking is done through a number of factors: (1) business impact, (2) peer reviews with a personalised scoring system, (3) squad KPIs, (4) % accelerator/decelerator controlled by department heads.

This formula has gone through two tests per department to ensure we have it right. One learning from the tests we ran was that we need to give feedback to people who give peer feedback (as they’re way too generous), and its sometimes tricky to set squad KPIs (not all squads have easy to attribute KPIs, or are mission-driven not metric-driven).

Top performers bonuses are calculated by: (% of salary base) + (% based on company quarterly performance) + (% extra if team goal is hit). Example calculation: Higher performers can earn 4-10% of their salary per quarter - so if they earn £65k, and are in the top every quarter they’ll get £26k (if all other metrics hit or £18k if only 2 quarters all metrics are hit).

I only want A-players at TryHackMe, and A-players only want to work with other A-players. After 3-6 months of discussion and iteration on the formula and process, we’ve now rolled out quarterly performance reviews. This is inspired by Revolut’s performance based culture, and Frank Slootman’s “Amp it up” methodology. Highly recommend Frank’s book, and Revolut’s performance deck.

I want an environment that REWARDS top performers, and pushes out low performers - who are also the most vocal (cough cough Glassdoor). I believe this structure does this, and that performance-based quarterly bonus structure will reward (and hopefully retain) our A-players.

The top half of the teams quarterly performance are published to the entire team, so everyone recognises the best for that quarter.

I love it because it also allows us to give really constructive feedback. Much of the time feedback given to staff in 1:1s is unstructured. However now we can break down a staffs score, and give them actionable feedback every quarter.

If a member of staff is in the bottom 2 each quarter, its a signal to look at whether the staff is a good fit for the company. It helps constantly raise the bar of the entire team; something our team deserves.. to work with the best people.

It works because if you’re a high performer and work really hard, you benefit from it a lot. If you’re in the middle, you have strong reason to work really hard and climb to the top.

Its worth noting that: (1) not all teams get quarterly bonuses (some are annual). (2) Sales & Customer Success are also compensated differently.

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Lets start by breaking down this years structure:

• Monday - Welcome presentation celebrating an insane 12 months having hit record high numbers, discussing notable stories from 2025 and an ice breaker before dinner.

• Tuesday - In the morning we talk on our vision/mission, the future of education, and have content engineering breakout workshops. Followed by fun afternoon activities.

• Wednesday - Live AMA with a user that got a job because of TryHackMe, content releases, finishing the morning with a talk on AI followed by a vibe coding workshop. In the afternoon we had a tour around Athens and meal out.

• Thursday - This day is dedicated to teams, with department-specific workshops and social activities. The day (and retreat) concludes with an awards dinner, recognizing standout staff members.

The retreat gives us a chance to celebrate together and for people to see more than just their team. What I found was important was having teams see the impact of their work - not just how much revenue it contributed to, but how it impacted the success of other teams. For example, product and engineering listening to how sales and customer success used what they built to close a >$1M deal. This celebration also fuels internal momentum.

It’s really hard to measure a retreat’s impact. I look for signals from feedback, teams, projects, and discussions that follow. There are metrics you can track (e.g. employee retention), but it’s never easy to quantify. At the end of the day, the retreat is for the teams - the people actually getting the work done - not senior leadership or founders. I’ve come to realise the retreat doesn’t really “help with company alignment,” but it does re-energise teams to return excited and refreshed - work is more enjoyable when you know the person behind the screen. That said, I’m seeing more companies move toward smaller retreats with specific groups - for example, Ramp used one to teach product/engineering “vibe coding” and accelerate AI adoption, while Pylon ran a hackathon that shipped 40 features in just 5 days.

With the number of people attending this year, it was impossible to talk with everyone. I favoured a few deep, meaningful conversations over endless small talk - so I made sure dinner discussions went deep on a handful of topics. A few notable ones this year were:

• The future of education (Echo, BADR, learning reinforcement)

• How to make our offering better for businesses and universities

• Whats working, and not working for user and lead generation

• Inner workings of software engineering and content engineering

• Why there is no innovation coming out of India

On a personal growth note - I’ve always admired how some inspiring leaders can rally their teams through powerful talks. I gave 2 this year and invested a lot of time to deliver them well - I put real pressure on myself because it’s a skill I want to build. The only way to get better at public speaking is to do more of it. I can’t share both talks publicly, but the one I did release is on why education is broken and how we need to fix it:

What I really loved about the retreat

• The deep conversations listed above

• Someone organised an adhoc lunch with several teams to discuss a problem restricting them from innovating. They hunted us all down at the retreat, spoke about the problem over lunch, and we walked away with a plan to build something that will lead to a ton of innovative new content on the platform.

• Being reminded how talented most of our people are

• Reflecting on how much we’ve achieved in 12 months

• Meeting someone that got a job because of TryHackMe

• Spending time with the other TryHackMe co-founder (we’re usually so busy that we rarely talk about topics not on an agenda)

• Listening to the award night winners acceptance speeches

What needs changing

• The retreat structure - deciding if we do one big retreat again, smaller meet-ups, or instead putting the capital into other employee benefits.

• More break out sessions between teams - for example having people from marketing, sales, customer success and product all in a room to talk about 2026.

Unexpected learnings

• As the company has grown, visibility and reasoning around tough decisions I’ve made often get warped through Chinese whispers - we used to be small enough that I could quickly address questions and eliminate misinformation. Over the last 12 months I’ve pushed people insanely hard, and I’m incredibly proud of how much we’ve delivered. Listening to other leaders, the awards night speeches, our long list of achievements, team conversations, and record-breaking revenue growth makes it all worth it. But pushing this hard - fixing dysfunctional teams fast, raising the talent bar - does come at a cost. Would I change it? Absolutely not - that’s the role, and the company is winning because of it.

• TryHackMe has been very founder-led, and that’s been enormously successful - but so many great ideas have come from 1:1 informal conversations. I need to remind myself to plan more with the team. We’ve always worked closely with the SLT, but the people on the ground - doing the work and seeing things day in, day out - have invaluable perspectives we need to tap into more.

• A skill you can develop is learning how to steer conversations toward something meaningful and deep. It doesn’t “just happen”, it’s something you teach yourself (mostly from others). Otherwise small talk dominates dinner. I’m okay at it, but have seen how others are great at navigating a conversation to “find conversation gold”.

TryHackMe is unapologetically unconventional. This means questioning everything and not doing something because it’s “what you usually do” - I’ve found a lot of comfort in thinking like this, as no founder should apologise for how they want their company to work, and the most successful companies operate differently. This doesn’t just apply to how we run the company, the team should question and challenge what is “usually done” - challenging the status quo. Its one of the reasons I’m writing this article - why would I share this so publicly and not just do it internal? Because (1) my posts lead to interesting conversations inside and outside the company, (2) I want other founders to seriously question what they want, and (3) it helps me reflect. We even had hats made for the retreat for every member of staff saying “unapologetically unconventional”.

To wrap up, the retreat this year was superb, and I had so much fun meeting everyone. Now we need to get back to work as we have 3600 hours to make up for.

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The rise in AI has already changed how everyone works. With today’s modern tools, one person has the capability of an entire team. I’ve seen landing pages that once took 3 hours to code built in just 5 minutes, better SEO advice (and results) from ChatGPT than a $21k marketing agency engagement, and fully fledged AI prototypes showcasing a new product experience (TTX) created in minutes by designers.

We can now do 10x more, with 10x less, 10x faster. However, this means that what was considered good 6 months ago, is not good today. If you don’t adapt you’ll fall behind whilst others race ahead and 10x themselves - we don’t want you miss out on this revolutionary shift that sweeping through every company.

Innovation just means making something better and is the outcome of everyone’s 50 year working life. You spend >40 hours a week working - 2080 hours a year and 124,000 in a lifetime. But what for? At its core it’s to create some new value for the world we live in. With AI, you’re able to get significantly more out of those 40 hours, increasing your impact.

TryHackMe’s mission is to make the world more digitally secure by training millions in cyber. Without platforms like us, cybercrime would be uncontrollable. Yet today, over 200 billion attacks hit daily - from state-level warfare to healthcare chaos. What we do is important, and you play a big part in it. AI amplifies what we’re capable of, lets us move faster, get more high-value work done, and accelerates our mission. Our mission hasn’t changed but how we work towards it has.

We must learn to use AI. This isn’t a small tweak to how you work, and it goes far beyond asking ChatGPT for writing help. It means breaking decade-old habits - the biggest being starting from scratch without AI. Let AI perform deep market research, or generate 10 brainstorm ideas in minutes, then use your expertise to refine. Using AI well is a skill built through constant practice - not by reading newsletters or watching videos, but by experimenting, playing, and learning first-hand.

Whats written here is not aspirational, but are new expectations that come with being a world-class team. I’ve been blown away with what some of you have been able to accomplish, and I promise you’ll be shocked with what you are now able to do.

What we now expect

• Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at TryHackMe. This isn’t optional - it’s the new standard. Use it to automate repetitive, time-consuming, low-value tasks first so you can focus on what actually moves the needle. Learn how to apply AI to your day-to-day work and deliver faster, smarter, and at a higher standard.

• AI usage will be part of performance reviews. We’ll be looking at how AI has improved the speed, quality, and creativity of your work. Using it effectively means it’s helped you deliver faster, raise standards, or find better solutions that make a real impact. Simply using AI for the sake of it won’t count. If you’re not using it effectively, and your colleagues are, it will be immediately obvious.

• Prompt engineering is a skill as important as reading. The way you research, work and learn has changed. Everyone must learn how to interact and get the most out of LLMs through well crafted prompts.

• Learn and share. Everyone has budget to try the latest cutting-edge AI tools. No person or department is exempt. Go and find the most knowledgeable people on your team who can help you become familiar with the latest and greatest in AI. Be proactive in sharing what works, and what doesn’t, within your department and in #ai-hub (such as prompts you’ve developed, tools that work, how you’ve changed working, or AI use cases).

• Interactive demos are now the default. With AI, you can go from text to working prototype within minutes. If you’re scoping a new feature, proposing a design, or outlining a flow - build it, don’t describe it. Use AI tools to create real, testable versions of your ideas. This is how we work now.

• AI before more headcount and resourcing. Before asking for more headcount or resources, show why AI can’t get you there first. If an autonomous AI agent was already on your team, what would this area look like? This question often sparks interesting discussions/projects.

• Everyone must change. No exceptions. This applies to us all. Including me and the entire leadership team.

We’re going through one of the biggest technological changes the world has ever seen, and we must adapt. Change can sound daunting, but if you don’t embrace it, you’ll get left behind. Don’t miss your chance to 10x yourself. If you’re thinking “that’s not possible,” you’re about to be surprised by what’s now achievable, and your peers will quickly outpace you.

AI is your capability amplifier - get significantly more from your work and career. Its paramount you learn how to use and get the most from these AI tools; you need to spend time practicing every week. Before you take on a task yourself, give ChatGPT (or similar tool) the first try. Treat it like you’ve just hired an intelligent assistant, one that works 24/7, and is your digital teammate.

AI-native startups are scaling at an unheard of rate - Cursor (AI code editor) hit $100M ARR in just 12m (with just 20 people), Loveable (text to app builder) hit $50M ARR in 6m (with just 40 people). The advances in AI have made it possible to create never-seen-before applications that are incredibly valuable (ChatGPT, Midjourney, ElevenLabs)

Every market is changing - the opportunity is massive. Every company on the planet is now looking to adopt AI - across teams, products, and workflows. You can enter almost any industry and make it fundamentally better with AI. There isn’t a single company that wouldn’t benefit, and because it’s still early, there’s almost no saturation.

Its easier than ever to create an app - the cost of building an application is arguably at a historical low. 12 year olds are now building apps, as you can now simply describe through chat-like text what you want to build, and it gets built. This means opportunities are being seized fast, and every day that goes by, your window to win in this unbelievably rare moment gets smaller.

What was good 6m ago is bad today - Customers expect more, because they’re seeing incredible things and the bar to what is good has sky rocketed. 1-person teams are able to develop movie-grade marketing ads, applications are being built faster and better (no excuse for poor looking UIs now), and customers notice.

You can do 10x more, with 10x less, 10x faster - In the past, large companies could outspend and out-execute you with sheer manpower. That’s no longer true. A single founder, using today’s modern way of working, can now outperform entire departments. That’s why even blue-chip companies need to adapt.

The investment in AI is off the charts - OpenAI are building a $500B (yes billion) mega factory, Microsoft spends $50B a year on AI R&D, Elon Musk raised $6B for xAI.

Its an exciting time to be alive. I’m just worried I’m not taking this once in a lifetime chance to win. I believe every founder is feeling this.

I think about AI in two ways, which are the next 2 sections of the article:

1. Building a superior product - creating something far more useful and differentiated for users.

2. Driving superior company performance - every team can now move faster and do more with fewer people and less resources.

Building a superior product

A question I keep asking myself is: “With everything changing so fast, what should I actually be doing so I don’t miss out?”. This helped led me to focus on outcomes first. It sounds obvious, but originally my thinking was really scattered:

• Should we be building an AI product?

• What industries will benefit most from the rise in LLMs?

• Is TryHackMe at risk? What’s defensible? What should we be doing?

• What will the world look like in 6 months if I don’t adapt?

• OpenAI is booming, what can I take/steal/learn?

Steve Jobs famously said you should start with the user experience, and work backwards - not start with the technology and see how to make it fit. So ask yourself what are you actually trying to do? As a manager is it to “get the best work from my team as fast as possible?”, or as a founder is it “how do we solve a real problem for our users better than anyone else?”.

To get a real advantage, don’t just wrap a service around ChatGPT - build and own something unique. Everyone’s using the same public LLMs, but real leverage comes from data no one else has. That kind of context makes products smarter - and harder to copy. Think Tesla with millions of cars on the road training their self-driving models, or GitHub Copilot learning from 420 million code repos.

Over the next few years we’re going to see some revolutionary new platforms and apps come out. OpenAI just acquired Jony Ive and his design company to build what they believe is the next wave of computing devices. There is so much opportunity, both for existing products and new. Its up to you to take advantage of this or leave it to those who can execute and win.

Questions you should ask yourself:

• What problem am I actually trying to solve for users?

• What data or unique value do you have that no one else does?

Driving superior company performance

Your competitors, and even colleagues, are using AI. They’re automating the repetitive, boring tasks and focusing on high-leverage work. Michael Porter said, superior performance comes from creating unique value, not just doing the same things better. The fastest way to create that unique value is to move fast and efficiently - and AI is how you get there.

At TryHackMe, soon using AI won’t be optional. It’ll be the new baseline. We’ll set expectations within the company, and include it in performance reviews.

Each team will be expected to actively embrace AI. Rethinking how they work. I’ll expect everyone to build and run their own AI agents. Staff will map their value chain (the key activities that create value for TryHackMe), identify repeatable workflows, and create agents to supercharge efficiency:

• Sales → agent that pulls prospect insights (company + individual), prepares personalised sales enablement and presentation material

• Product & Engineering → agents for prototyping, and increasing development velocity

• Marketing → agent acting like a mini SEO agency + social content assistant

• Data → agent that pulls from GA, product usage, finance - making insights self-serve for everyone

It also means that before any team can ask for more headcount or resources, they must demonstrate why they cant get what they’re doing with AI. We’ll also look for examples of it during interviews.

Interestingly 96% of the TryHackMe team already use AI - but most only scratch the surface with basic ChatGPT prompts. We need to go deeper. There’s so much more - if that’s all you’re using, you’re really missing out.

This shift applies to me too. I’m learning as much as possible - because if we don’t adapt, we die. It’s blunt, but true. Companies are building faster than ever. If we don’t keep up, we fall behind - on product, on execution, on everything.

I’m also seeing the team share success stories, and want to encourage this more

Andy Grove’s Book

Only the Paranoid Survive (1998) describes strategic inflection points - moments when everything changes, and you either adapt or get wiped out. That’s exactly what AI is doing today. Every company is being forced to rethink how they work, what they build, and what “good” even looks like. It’s why I keep questioning if we’re moving fast enough, solving the right problems, or if someone else already is.

Here are a few key takeaways from the book - I’d highly recommend reading it (I’ve asked our entire leadership team to do the same):

• We’re at an inflection point, and if we don’t adapt, we’ll get beaten.

• Great managers are able to adapt - what worked in the past, won’t work (or be acceptable) now.

• Managers should have budget to experiment with new techniques and products.

• There needs to be a sense of urgency around the change - from top to bottom.

• The entire company needs to make an active effort to learn new skills to thrive.

Why being paranoid is a good thing

I use my insistent FOMO to keep pushing things forward and improving. It forces me to constantly question if we’re moving fast enough, or building the right things.

We’re in an interesting point in history. I’m not interested in watching it happen. Not just because if we don’t move now and adapt we’ll lose, but because the opportunities in this new way of working - and what we can now build - are too big to ignore.

Thanks for reading. I’m sharing a few more thoughts on my Slack - join here (its free).

Please note, engineering is extremely expensive, so you have to make sure you’re building the right things. Speed can’t come without direction.

Set ridiculously uncomfortable ambitious deadlines

Use your gut and intuition to set a deadline that feels slightly ridiculous. Don’t let overly cautious engineering estimates define the pace - force ambition, and let the team figure out the solutions. An aggressive deadline creates intensity, ruthless prioritisation, and will push the team to do more than they thought was possible. Engineers are experts at building, but not all are experts at setting the pace - and if you let them set the tempo, you’ll most likely get what’s comfortable

Your team (and you) might question why you’re the best person to set a date, and you’ll probably get push back (if it doesn’t raise an eyebrow it might not be ambitious enough). Work expands to fill the time given (Parkinsons Law), shorter deadlines compress it. If you don't set the clock aggressively, you guarantee bloated timelines. You’ll be significantly further along with an ambitious date than without one.

Tips: send the exact deadline in Slack - no “May” or “Q2,”, and don’t let the deadline slip. Its easy to get a few weeks out and move it - but the real push and intensity comes during that final stretch.

Have the right team and people

The entire team needs to have a natural willingness to build - we specifically test for this when hiring and even send candidates an article about our high-performing environment. If this excites a candidate, they’re a good fit; if it doesn’t, they’re not. We also look for previous startup experience - FAANG experience tends to get 10x the credit over finding those who actually love the startup grind.

The best performing teams and people sets the bar for everyone else. There is no excuse for low performers, and you should work to rectify quickly; too often, we delay these decisions. Its unfair on the rest of the team if one person is working hard, and others are not - a low performer will bring down the velocity of the entire team; act fast to protect team momentum.

Tip: measuring engineering performance is a whole other topic, but I can’t recommend GetDX enough.

Pressure must come top down, & bottoms up (the team)

Building product is very cross functional. Everyone’s busy, so set the expectation that if someone needs something, they shouldn’t wait around - ask, push, follow up. They should do whatever it takes to keep moving, and no one should be shy about chasing to get things done. Examples:

• Engineering waiting on a decision from product - push and follow up

• Product waiting on a decision from stakeholders - push and follow up

• Engineering waiting on code reviews from the team - push and follow up

The team should never be waiting around. They should be following up regularly, pushing and challenging others. It doesn’t matter who it is - even SLT - everyone should apply pressure to keep things moving. Instead of thinking, “I’ll get to that next week” or “they’re probably busy” the mindset should be “why don’t you do it today?” and “who else can I go to so I’m not blocked?”

Supercharge your team with AI

We’re in an AI revolution as big as the industrial revolution. If you’re not using AI to build product, you’re already falling behind. It can supercharge ICs' capabilities and productivity. There’s a lot to say on this, but here are a few of my favourite TryHackMe success stories.

• Technical Support - Someone from our support team used Cursor to build an admin dashboard, giving her team a direct way to update content instantly - bypassing the usual multi-step handoff to engineering.

• Engineering - Using Cursor an engineer (without being asked to) made a page to monitor, update and re-run scheduled tasks, all within just a few hours. This was previously a very manual process, which will save the entire team a lot of time.

• Design - Product design used Bolt to make a fully fledged new product experience that we ended up showing clients to help with discovery.

• Content - The team developing our lessons uses Bolt to help create fun interactive exercises.

Using AI at work should be a baseline expectation - make sure your teams are using it. I really like how the CEO of Shopify wrote about this.

Get the team motivated

Not only do you need the right team, they all need to be motivated, excited, and believe the deadline is possible. Steve Jobs set ridiculously uncomfortable ambitious deadlines, but convinced the team it was possible, and a term was coined for the way he did it: “The Reality Distortion Field” (RDF)

The RDF mixed charisma, relentless will, and a habit of bending facts to fit the purpose. Strangely, it worked even when you saw it happening, and over time we stopped fighting it, accepting it as a force of nature.
~source

Andy Hertzfield, a key engineer working with Steve on the original Macintosh, talks about the RDF here; getting 24+ months of work done in just 12. He also raised a pirate flag in the office to rally the team around speed and rebellion.

Get the team excited. Everyone on the team is motivated differently, and you should lean into that for each person. Here are a few things I like to do:

• Show numbers – remind them how big the impact is by sharing real numbers (e.g this feature will reach 4 million users).

• Talk about the work’s impact - connect the project to real outcomes like changing lives or winning market share, and back it up with real proof like customer stories.

Have accountability and milestones

Have just one person held accountable for the delivery of the project. Everyone in the team has a key part to play, but one person should be ultimately responsible. It doesn’t always have to be the PM. For engineering heavy tasks, it can be the EM.

Have milestone breakdowns written up and shared with everyone. Breaking a big project into smaller, frequent deadlines works because teams naturally cram just before something’s due. Shorter deadlines allow you to keep the intensity high.

Intensity will always spike at the end - but great PMs spread that pressure more evenly, so the team isn’t drowning in the final stretch.

Be in the details

Being in the details is a superpower and has so many benefits that many struggle to understand. It allows the team to be close to decision makers, move faster without layers of translation, and build real momentum instead of waiting for approvals. A few other benefits are:

• Remove bottlenecks faster - being in the details with your team is a superpower that lets you spot blockers early and clear them before they slow you down

• Quicker rounds of feedback - going back and making changes is expensive, by seeing designs, prototypes and being involved in discussions early will speed up development.

There are so many reasons why being in the details is imperative to shipping faster, but its misunderstood as micromanagement. Its not about controlling decisions, but opening up and participating in discussions to accelerate decisions. It’s how you spot friction early, unblock teams fast, and keep momentum without bureaucracy.

Be in the trenches with the team, join calls, have short demos, set goals on the call. At TryHackMe we expect all leaders, and PMs to be in the details. There is more to say on this section, especially as a fan of founder mode, but thats for another post.

Daily updates for short term projects

For short-term projects, asking for daily updates from the team helps with wider awareness of project development. It drives urgency by making everyone’s work highly visible and gives you the opportunity to comment on, stop, or push harder on specific tasks. 8 hours a day is a lot of time, so you should expect meaningful updates from each person. Daily stand-ups also work well.

Reward and recognise

Celebrate wins publicly so the team feels the impact of their work - show them the results and bring them along for the journey. If they’ve been working late nights or weekends, recognise it properly: reward them financially, but also give them time to recover. In the past, I’ve had teams expense dinners with their families as a small thank you, but after intense periods, it’s just as important to slow down briefly, reflect, and reset before pushing again.

Moving fast comes at a cost

Building fast does come at a cost, and its worth recognising:

• Team burnout and churn can happen when you move fast - that’s the reality of pushing hard. We operate like an elite sports team, where the focus is on performance and delivery, not comfort (but with recovery and support built in to sustain peak performance).

• Code quality might take a hit when you choose to move fast. In a startup, speed is what keeps you alive long enough to grow and win; momentum first, cleanup second. Keep a basic standard, expect some bugs, and fix issues fast. That said, getting faster at writing code - through AI, automation, and better pipelines - means speed and quality don’t have to be at odds. Expect some bugs, but as long as the team is fast to fix issues, it’s a worthwhile trade-off.

• Creativity can take a hit when you move fast, which is why you need discovery upfront. Creative prototyping and building don’t happen at 100 miles an hour - they come from deep, obsessive thinking over time. Without it, you’ll sprint in the wrong direction, iterating on shallow ideas.

Moving slow comes at an even greater cost

Moving fast comes at a cost - but moving slow is even worse. You lose momentum, and eventually, your edge - if you even had one to begin with. Teams disengage when projects drag, and top performers won’t wait for slow decisions. If you’re a small startup with something valuable, expect competitors to copy it - so move faster and build on momentum while you’ve got it.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading! I’m sharing 2 more tips on my Slack - join to find out (its free).

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We have 9 product squads (making up 50% of the entire company), that each have their own core focus areas. 4 of these are growth squads that work on different parts of the funnel: activation (our first and longest standing squad), engagement, monetisation and acquisition.

Having run hundreds of experiments, built growth teams from the ground up, completed many Reforge courses, worked closely with product and growth advisors, churned through books and articles, listened to growth podcasts, and learnt through my own failings, I thought I’d share some lessons.

#1 Quality over quantity

It’s obvious, but overlooked. We care about acquiring, activating and retaining users that are the best fit for the product. Sign ups are a vanity metric. Who cares if you have 1 million users signing up if only 10k end up being active.

When analysing experiment results, we filter for “gold users”. We still look at all users, but want to make sure we’re analysing data, making decisions and spending time building a better product for users that genuinely will get value from the existing product. As Paul Graham said, you want 100 people love your product, not 1000 people sort of like it. You’ll find those 100 people will bring in 100x more.

Also, you don’t know how many sign ups are coming from bots. My opinion is you should delay battling bot accounts (especially in the early days). Focus on growing and learning, when its becomes a problem, or your product has a high cost associated, then work on it.

We don’t have any control over user registrations as TryHackMe’s growth is 100% organic / word of mouth, but if you’re spending money on paid ads, it’ll be even more important to bring in the best users for your CAC to ROI ratio.

#2 Not every software engineer is right for a growth squad

Growth engineering is focused on creating fast experiments to learn and find quick wins that drive product growth. Development is extremely quick, MVF-like, and is usually ripped out of the code - you find the easiest and lowest effort way to engineer with quality and unit tests being an after thought.

This is some engineers worst nightmare, and will slow the squad down should they be tasked with growth work. Finding the right type of engineer to go into growth has been transformative. The work is extremely high paced, hacky, but incredibly rewarding as you make such a direct impact on company growth - the work of our growth teams have contributed to millions of dollars of revenue to the company.

There is a great article here on “What is growth engineering”. I’ve undersold how exciting it can be to be a growth engineer, but the point of this lesson is, the wrong engineer in the squad can be detrimental to the success of the team. When hiring engineers, we try to understand if they’re better suited to growth or core engineering.

#3 You can run experiments without engineers

You don’t always need engineers to validate ideas - there are faster, cheaper ways to learn. Use tools like Typeform, Figma, HotJar, run smoke tests, even email to test demand, messaging, or workflows before writing a single line of code.

#4 Make data self-serve

Relying on the data team for all analysis will slow you down. Surface-level analysis should be done by the squad. PMs should set up their own dashboards, track metrics, and explore trends themselves; a skill we look for when hiring.

The data team is a huge unlock and can supercharge a growth team, but you don’t always need them. They should be focused on the highest-leverage questions - so they’re not spending hours on basic requests. All our PMs know how to use Amplitude, and we have a data dictionary that breaks down all events to make self-serve analysis easier.

#5 Share lessons (failed and successful)

Growth teams are very expensive, but the insights they get are incredibly valuable. If the rest of the company doesn’t hear about those learnings, it’s a big missed opportunity. Even failed experiments show how users behave. Sharing these learnings with teams like product and marketing helps everyone make better decisions.

We do quarterly growth debriefs that anyone in product or marketing can join, post updates in Slack about ongoing experiments and what we’re learning, and hold regular squad calls to keep everyone aligned.

You also want the rest of your teams to be really reactive to the lessons. When they hear about a lesson, they should be proactive in trying to apply it to their work.

#6 The whole company should contribute growth ideas

This isn’t anything new, Duolingo wrote about it a while ago, but having the entire company able to submit an experiment idea is a big unlock. You can source ideas from staff that have different experiences with your product; customer support, lesson creators, sales, customer success - all see different parts of the business.

We try to encourage growth squads (not just the PM, but entire squad: designers and engineers) to run workshops with the rest of the company to crowdsource ideas.

On another note, what I’m really proud of at TryHackMe is people in different departments will share user stories to different teams; for example, our Head of Sales shares insights that feed directly into activation and engagement.

#7 Time box experiments to force solutions

Parkinson’s Law: tasks take as long as the time you give them. If you give an engineer 10 days to develop an experiment, it will take that much time, but you’d be surprised how quickly you can move by asking “what does a 2 day solution look like”.

The problem when you grow as a company is things slow down, and experiments that took 1 day now take 1 week. You introduce loads of process (e.g. 2 code reviews, unit/integration tests, “only pushing on certain days” etc..). At TryHackMe any squad can push to production at any time, and we have measures to help mitigate potential issues, but we don’t overcorrect if something small goes wrong.

Experiment results compound and help with product growth. If you learn more, you’ll build a better product with better activation, engagement and conversion rates. Which is why it’s so important that “every second matters” - move as fast as you possibly can.

#8 There is no failing in growth

A failed experiment isn’t a failure, because you’ve learnt something. I actually hate when an experiment performs the same - I like negative (or obviously positive) changes, because you know it’s having some sort of impact.

#9 Balance “big bets” and “quick wins”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of chasing quick wins. They’re fast, measurable, and feel productive. But to unlock big step-change growth, you need to take bigger bets that feel riskier but that can move the needle meaningfully. We try to have at least 1 big bet in each growth squad per quarter.

#10 The whole squad needs to be bought in

You want your entire squad focused on the problem, not just the PM. Everyone should be contributing ideas, clear on the metric you’re trying to move, and genuinely excited about making an impact. Ideally even engineers sit in on user interviews (a page taken out of Amplitude's playbook), and read user feedback. We share user feedback and recordings to the squad to give everyone as much context as possible.

Closing comments on growth

I like to write for early stage startups. So one last thing, don’t hire growth teams until you’re ready and have some momentum (or “product market fit”) - it’s the entire companies job to grow, and if you hire a Head of Growth, or Growth PMs too early, you’ll end up wasting both time and money. You can’t run experiments without existing traction, traffic or users.

Founder led growth is crucial - and as the company grows its expected that you’re more “hands off” - but this should not be the case. Founders have so much context about the entire business, and that involvement should be welcomed by the teams. It’s why when I read “Founder Mode” based off a talk by Brian Chesky (CEO and Airbnb Founder), I was so happy to learn the way I wanted to operate wasn’t wrong and often misunderstood.

I’m sharing 2 more product growth lessons on my Slack - join to find out (its free).

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Focus and Perfection

Steve famously said to John Ivy, “what have you said no to lately”. There are so many potential distractions in any company, and its hard to say no, because everything at a startup is “an opportunity”. He says that being focused is saying no to something even though you wake up every day completely obsessing over it. Ask yourself the same question: how many things have you said no to lately?

The founder of gmail also believes that to “win”, every product needs to have only 3 killer features; for them, it was storage, search, and speed. Its the same with Revolut, they hyper focus on low fees and speed of transactions. As it is with Superhuman, focusing on navigation speed, reducing cognitive load and email composing speed.

I’m starting to think of a product like a communal garden that grows with functionality. The more you add to it, the more it grows, and the more maintenance it needs. Large gardens also need lots of gardeners (employees).

Steve valued simplicity. When his team presented an overly complex way to burn movies to a DVD on the iMac - with countless options and formats - he cut them off. Walking to the whiteboard, he drew a box with a single button labeled "Burn" and said, "Make it that." Then he left, leaving the team wondering why they hadn’t seen it before. Once he drew it, it was obvious.

Its so hard to make something simple, its so easy to make it complicated. At TryHackMe we have weekly PDR (product design review) calls, and I’m constantly thinking about how we can make design and functionality as simple as possible; what can we take away, can TryHackMe do any of the heavy lifting for the user, how do we get the user not to think, how do we turn this into a delightful moment.

"Perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away."
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Some of my favourite recent moments that beautifully capture simplicity are:

• Login with Touch ID - logging into apps, especially email, is usually slow and painful. Apple fixed this with a Chrome integration - tap Touch ID, and you're in.

• 2FA Code in Text on Keyboard - 2FA codes add friction, but Apple streamlines the process by detecting, and copying the code, then offers you the ability to instantly paste it. It turns an annoyance into a seamless experience.

Both of these could have easily been complicated experiences, and designers at Apple probably iterated a lot before getting to these delightfully simple solutions.

Team Size <100

Steve’s teams were small, and very focused. 100 people built the first Macintosh, and he wouldn’t let the team be any larger. If someone wanted to hire someone new, you’d have to replace someone less important/efficient.

At TryHackMe, we’re keeping our hierarchical structure as flat as possible for as long as possible; layers slow you down, communication get lost and it weakens accountability. Big companies with millions in funding can outspend, outmarket, and attract top talent. The only way to compete is by being really focused, doing a few things incredibly well and out-executing everyone else.

This is why I love how we structure our product, design and engineering teams into focused squads. Small teams of between 4-7 people (product manager, designers, and engineers) that have one focus with a clear outcome (KPI). We even go a step further, and to ensure we remove as many distractions from these squads as possible, we have a seperate platform squad that picks up bugs, and ad hoc requests.

Being Direct

Being direct in communication was a form of simplicity for Steve. If he thought your work could be better, he could tell you straight up. This does sometimes come at the cost of being polite, but is that a problem? No time is wasted, feedback is clear and not left open to interpretation.

I also prefer being direct. At times, it might come across as blunt, but those who know me understand that I prioritize speed. I respond to >50 msgs/emails daily, and on top of everything else, it doesn’t give me much time to add pleasantries; a cost of being so in the details. I find different cultures understand this differently - people from Poland/Germany are usually more direct, whereas the British are more polite.

We could all be more direct. Its faster, and clearer. Thats why machines can communicate faster - sending the least amount of info without losing clarity.

You can read more of Steve Jobs emails here.

Normalising leaving meetings

There was a story of Steve saying to someone in a meeting that wasn’t paying attention “if you’re ever not paying attention again, you won’t work for Apple“. It reminded me of Elon Musks meeting rule: if you were in a meeting, and not adding or providing value, you were expected to leave - it was rude not to.

Why isn’t this normalised? I find most people don’t leave because of FOMO or “there might be 1 thing important later on” (usually not the case), or just laziness. Everyone should be more comfortable saying no to more, and leaving meetings if they’re not adding value.

Storytelling

Steve spent over 90 hours rehearsing for his presentations, obsessing over every detail - from each word on a slide to the stage lighting.

He kept his language simple, always clear and easy to understand. He was a master at framing things for impact - when Apple sold 4 million iPhones in a year, he didn’t just state this number. Instead, he rephrased it: “We sold more than 20,000 phones a day” making the same data far more powerful.

Another example of this was when a reporter asked Steve how he felt knowing he only had 5% of the mobile market. He responded by comparing it to other industries, saying “We have more market share in mobile devices, than BMW and Mercedes have of automotive industry”. A totally brilliant new way of looking at it.

You can say anything in 1,000 words, but Steve used the fewest to paint the best picture. David Senra discussed this on his podcast, and I completely agree: you have to train your brain to strip away unnecessary words for maximum impact.

Other points I found interesting:

• Steve never had a wordy slide, he preferred simple pictures

• His presentation philosophy was simple: the audience would only remember three key points.

• He personally approved every Apple ad, even calling his team at 2am to debate a single word.

💬 I've set up a Slack where we can talk all things product and startup related - join here

Next article: Inspired by Elena Verna, my top 10 growth hacking learnings scaling TryHackMe to >4 million users.

Bonus - “Steve Jobs and Nice CEOs” - X link

TryHackMe is a fully bootstrapped, profitable, scale-up, with over 100 staff from over 31 different timezones. We support ~4 million users, growing by thousands each day and they’re all waiting for us to do more, which is why we need to act with intensity and urgency. Here is what it’s like working at TryHackMe:

• Operate with intensity - We have an ethos of immediate action, demanding extreme intensity, and expect everyone to push the boundaries. There is a deep focus on executing at a high pace with urgency. Our intensity isn’t just about speed; it’s about pushing your limits to drive meaningful impact. The faster we deliver new value to our users, the better we help solve their problems before someone else does it better.

• Exceptional work requires embracing criticism - Be comfortable accepting and giving constructive feedback, however small. Accept being challenged, not just by your managers but by your peers. We expect excellence, and this is only possible when you’re open to taking feedback onboard, even in a public setting. We’re all on the same side, so hold your peers accountable and to a high standard. Would you rather hear your work is 'good enough,' or push it to be truly exceptional?

• Proactive contribution - We’re a startup, so expect to get involved with tasks that don’t strictly align with your role. TryHackMe is a product-led company that is highly cross-functional, and you should want to get involved with other initiatives internally. This is captured by one of our company values: willingness to contribute. Here, your impact extends beyond your title, everyone plays a role in moving the company forward.

• Be Visible - As a fully remote company, we rely on clear communication and expect people to be present on Slack (sometimes after hours). We also value deep work and focus. Balancing the two might seem tricky, but we trust you to make it work. Our meetings are frequent, small, and focused - no large presentations or company-wide gatherings. Read more about how we counteract working in silos here.

• Founder Mode - Both founders (Ashu, me) built the original product and remain deeply involved in every detail, from extremely small design choices or wording in content, to big strategic decisions. This means you’ll frequently interact with us, sometimes taking direction on what needs to be done. We don’t believe in a ‘hands-off’ approach; we’re actively driving the vision every day. This behaviour is best explained by an article written on a talk given by the founder of Airbnb.

• Execution > Strategy - We prioritize execution and accountability over endless planning. Success means taking ownership, moving fast, and delivering results. In a growing market like ours, where timing is so important, execution is essential. This means making decisions quickly, even when it’s challenging, and sometimes focusing on progression over perfection to keep momentum high. We count on staff to make decisions quickly and to over-communicate.

We operate this way because it’s now or never. We can’t let this opportunity pass by. Rapid execution is everything, and the bar for excellence is high - TryHackMe is positioned to win. We've impacted millions of users without funding and achieved profitability, but we haven’t won yet. This makes it essential to work relentlessly - we don’t function like we’ve won, because we haven’t, and every day competitors are working hard to beat us. We need to work smarter and harder.

Our department heads have written 'primer' documents designed to give you a no-nonsense look at what you’re signing up for. These are shared with candidates before interviews to spark discussion. We understand that not everyone will agree with or enjoy our culture - and that’s okay. The goal is to save everyone time; if you’re hired and it’s not a fit, we’ll be back to square one. We’ve made these primers public; check them out below:

• 🏒 Product Primer

• 🛠 Engineering Primer

Why is it that the top sports teams, like Manchester City or the Boston Celtics, continue to win? Many teams have endless resources, so why do some have a higher success rate? It’s because of the players. Their passion, relentless drive, and commitment make the team a winner. Like a sports team, TryHackMe is trying to find A-players who will make TryHackMe win, and I hope this article helps attract the ones who are driven to make a difference.

We’re not like Google where you can get lost in the noise, each new hire is very visible and makes a noticeable difference, even at our size. You know if you’re working at TryHackMe that you’re working with the best people, and staff won’t accept anything less. You’re working with exceptional talent, will learn a lot, be challenged, work long hours but be an environment set up to win. It’s unfair to the rest of the company if you don’t perform and everyone else does.

Brian Chesky said, 'Culture is what happens in a room when you’re not there, and brand is what people say when no one is in the room.' The culture at TryHackMe is high-intensity and fast-paced. Users are constantly learning and growing every day on our platform, 24/7, 365 days a year, driving us to move extremely fast to keep up. If you’re looking for a standard 9-5, this isn’t the place for you.

Recruiters often sell a company as a country club, only talking about the amazing benefits (we have those too) but rarely mentioning the other expectations. We want to be clear about who we’re looking for.

Who wouldn’t want to say they worked at Apple or Meta in their early days? TryHackMe is at that exciting stage of rapid growth, brimming with opportunity. If our high-energy, winning culture excites you, and you bring a deep sense of urgency, resilience, and a drive to push your limits, you’ll fit right in. If not, that’s okay - let’s save us both some time.

We’re hiring.

TryHackMe is in an unusual position where there is no clear winner in our market. We believe it’s open for the taking, but we must act now. The only way we will win the market is by rallying our troops behind our mission and taking advantage of this opportunity. The company retreat is a great way to do this.

Lets start off by going over the retreats structure.

• Sunday - The presentation outlines how everyone can get the most out of the retreat, celebrates accomplishments, and discusses notable stories from 2024. It ends with an icebreaker before dinner.

• Monday - We interview one of our users who transitioned from being a nurse to a cyber practitioner using the platform (more on this later), followed by a session from the founders on the next 1-3 years. The morning concludes with cross-functional workshops. In the afternoon, there is a fun team-building activity, followed by an off-site evening dinner.

• Tuesday - We have a motivational guest speaker, Colin Maclachlan (a former member of the SAS), who will talk about urgency, intensity, and drive. This is followed by insights from marketing, and the morning concludes with an AMA with the senior leadership team. The afternoon includes a beach activity with plenty of social time.

• Wednesday - This day is dedicated to teams, with department-specific workshops and social activities. The day (and retreat) concludes with an awards dinner, recognizing standout staff members.

You can check out our full agenda here.

It's rare that we all have the time to come together, step back, and really look at where we’re heading as a company, as well as the impact we’re making. The retreat is structured to encourage social interaction (especially between different departments – as a PLG company, it’s imperative that teams across the company form strong bonds) and to get everyone excited about the company’s direction.

There are so many reasons why I love the retreat, but if I were to summarise it:

• We work very cross-functionally at TryHackMe, and the retreat allows teams to meet face-to-face to build rapport and form better working relationships, which leads to stronger internal functions.

• It’s a rare opportunity to informally discuss and reflect on key projects (during breakfast, lunch, dinner, activities, on the coach, etc.).

• Everyone at TryHackMe has a unique perspective on their contributions to our mission, and we can use this time to talk to everyone individually to ensure we’re working on the right priorities for 2025.

• We can also recognize high-performing staff, showing others what excellence looks like and encouraging positive behavior and drive through healthy competition.

• Personally, I get the chance to talk to everyone, which serves as an informal in-person skip level. It helps me make better decisions and speeds up projects by staying connected to what’s happening on the ground.

• We align the company on our vision, key projects, and overarching mission.

I was so proud to invite one of our users to our retreat. Chrissy, who was a nurse, used TryHackMe to become a cyber practitioner and shared her story with the entire company. We spend a lot of time discussing numbers and growth, so it’s important to remind everyone that there are real humans behind the screen. Having staff see the impact of their work through compelling stories is crucial, and Chrissy was kind enough to join us at the retreat, allowing staff to talk to her about her journey.

We were also joined by Colin Maclachlan from the SAS ("Who Dares Wins"), who spoke to us about his military missions and why it's important to act now. Urgency, intensity, and drive are the reasons you win—an ethos TryHackMe abides by. Colin's inspiring talk emphasized this message and was a hit with staff.

There were many organic conversations about what we’re building and aiming to achieve. Some breakfasts and lunches were spent in small teams discussing the next phase of development for key internal projects, ranging from new product experiences we’re building to big bet ideas planned for next year.

Collaboration is essential at TryHackMe. For example, our product teams work cross-functionally with software engineers, designers, marketing, content engineers, and more. Effective collaboration fuels creativity, drives innovation, and leads to better outcomes. This retreat is an opportunity to strengthen those connections and continue growing together as a team. During the retreat, teams were mixed up, giving everyone the opportunity to collaborate with different people each time. We did this through:

• Meals - Shared meals created informal opportunities for staff to connect, brainstorm, and build relationships across departments. It’s always a great sign when people want to stay out after dinner to continue socializing.

• Activities - Team-building activities encouraged problem-solving and collaboration, helping to break down silos and foster trust.

• Workshops - Our workshops had different focuses, involving different groups of departments.

• Travel - Some activities required travel via coach, which provided another small opportunity for people to have organic conversations in a relaxed environment.

The retreat is expensive and logistically challenging, but worth it. We invest in our people, and know they’ll return it back 10x. TryHackMe only hires A players, and this company-wide benefit ensures we continue to keep our team excited, intensely aligned, bought into our mission and hyper focused on winning.

Now everyone has met, they should work better together, make better decisions, be more comfortable acting faster, which ultimately will help us win the market.

Here are a few posts from our team following this years retreat

Like what you read? We’re hiring: https://tryhackme.com/work-at-thm. We’re desperately in need of talented engineers and product managers:

• Growth Product Manager

• Associate Product Manager

• Senior Software Engineer

• Lead Software Engineer

The best ideas encompass something you love (your obsession), your strengths and experiences, and starting with an idea that will own a niche of the wider market you want to win. This post goes through these three key elements.

Find Obsession

Your idea must solve a problem you’re passionate about. You’re going to be putting significant effort into getting your startup off the ground, and you need to be constantly thinking about the problem you’re solving for users.

Its common knowledge that Steve Jobs was obsessed with making the Macintosh and iPhone, deeply thinking about every detail from the internal components, design, software and even box opening experience. What demonstrated his obsession to me was that on a Sunday evening Steve called Google asking them to fix the yellow colour in the second “O” in the Google logo shown on their iPhone app (full story here); he obsessed about the details and something as minor as the gradient of yellow on Googles logo is an example of how he strove for nothing but excellence.

He did this because every detail mattered to him, and this behaviour isn’t something you can fake - his obsession drove him to build the worlds greatest products, and persevere when Apple were almost bankrupt.

I’m obsessed with TryHackMe. My first and last thought in my day is about the product, people and company. I love what we’re working on, our mission and the users we get to help, making it easy to put in late nights and weekends. Without this obsession and love for what we’re doing, I’d have given up a few months into starting.

Play to your strength

It can be an advantage to leverage your existing skills and experiences. By focusing on what you already excel at, you can navigate challenges more effectively and build a product or service that truly stands out.

Here are a few examples of founders that have played to their strengths and experiences:

• Bumble (a dating app) was founded by one of the original Tinder creators, Whitney Herd. She had experience building the largest online dating app, and took her knowledge to Bumble, that turned over $844.8M in 2023.

• Before Tom Blomfield started Monzo, he worked at major financial institutions such as Citi and Capital One. The skills, knowledge and experience learnt whilst at these institutions was key in successfully starting his own bank.

• The founder of the blogging platform Ghost, started at Wordpress, a competing publishing company; Ghost now turns over $6.8M annually.

However, this does not mean you should completely abandon an idea due to complete lack of experience or skills - everything can be learned. I am a prime example of this, having had no prior experience in cybersecurity (or professional experience) before founding a cyber training company that now generates tens of millions of pounds. I wrote a blog post about how young entrepreneurs have a big advantage and you’ll have much less experience the younger you are.

In fact, as I write in the above article, if most understood what it takes to succeed in starting a company, there would be far less successful founders.

Playing to your strengths should be a consideration, not strict criteria in choosing what to start. Do you think Elon Musk had built a rocket before starting SpaceX (the answer is no).

Bill Gates wouldn’t start Microsoft in 2024

Pretend someone else invented Microsoft, and Bill Gates is 20 years old looking to start a company. He wouldn’t re-invent an operating system as the problem and opportunity that existed in 1980s doesn’t exist now.

Just because you’ve seen someone you admire or follow start a service, product or brand successfully, doesn’t mean you should do the same. I have fallen into the trap of loving a product so much I want to create my own version - but there really isn’t any need to.

Start with a niche

A niche is a small, specialized market for a specific product or service. You want to find a small slither of the market you can completely dominate in first, and progressively expand. This is because:

• You have less competition and can establish yourself more easily

• You build credibility by being an expert in your niche

• Have a clear valuable proposition and build a strong relationship with customers

You want to start by building a product 100 people absolutely love, rather than 1000 people sort-of like. This is only possible by starting with a small part of the market, and expanding. Here are a few companies that started with a niche:

• Amazon - started by only selling books, then expanded to other product ranges.

• Facebook - the social media site was initially only for Harvard students, before expanding to other colleges, states, then going global.

Lets say you want to start a meal delivery service. This is an incredibly crowded and saturated market. You should start the service aimed primarily at a subset of people to get your foothold; such as fish lovers, people with celiac disease, or purely for vegans. Then progressively expand.

You should dream big, but your initial startup idea should be a part of the journey that lets you start successfully. Do one thing insanely well, rather than a few things poorly.

For TryHackMe, we started by developing training content for a specifically small and niche area of cyber security (just for beginners learning offensive cyber). We did that really well, and now have training for all experience levels for a variety of different security areas; even today our biggest growth driver is word of mouth recommendations for how beginners can start learning cyber security (our original value prop).

Summary

If you take anything away from this post, let it be that your belief (and obsession) in your idea is what will keep you going during the difficult early days. Its not easy, but the difference is you, the individual; its common knowledge that people invest in the entrepreneur, and the idea is secondary, your perseverance and drive is what will make you successful.

This isn’t the only way to choose your idea - its my broad advice. You could also find a clear gap in the market in a really boring industry that has had no innovation; some founders have made millions modernising legacy technology, or building a competing product to a publicly traded company that customers currently hate (IPO with a low NPS).

As strange as it sounds, don’t spend too long on your idea - starting is the most important first step which allows you to validate it with users. Most people spend way too long on the company name, domain, branding, but starting is what matters and is most important. You want to fail fast, and be aggressive at executing. Everyone on planet earth has several business ideas, but little people actually start and persevere.

As Steve Jobs once said (albeit about product ideas):

Building your first product

Make sure you’re building a product that is solving an actual problem. Many people fall into the trap of wanting to start a business without considering how it will provide value to users. If you’re not solving a user’s problem, why will they use it?

Start by building for a small audience; don’t build to cater to everyone. Everyone has different problems and preferences, and trying to build for everyone on the planet will result in a mediocre product for many, rather than a powerful product loved by a few.

“It's better to have 100 people that love you than a million people that just sort of like you. Find 100 people that love you“ - Paul Graham

It’s better to have 100 people love your product, and are willing to pay and share it, than a million people who sort of like, try it and end up forgetting it (or worse, not being a product they see enough value in to pay for long-term).

TryHackMe reached 2 million user registrations, and never invested in any paid acquisition methods (no paid ads). Our growth was completely organic and through word of mouth; people loved the product, championed it to their network, and got like-minded people to sign up, who then ended up loving the product, and the loop continues. We didn’t start by building a product for everyone but focused on beginners who needed training to break into their first cyber security career.

When you’re building, set a timeline for when you want to release your product by, and set exactly what features you need to create to develop the smallest viable product that you can get in front of users.

Your first product doesn’t need to be scalable, in fact, its better if you build it in the most manual, quickest, and unscalable way possible, as your product will evolve a lot after you’ve started to talk to users.

When building your minimal viable product, ask yourself on a regular basis if the feature you’re working on is essential to the product to show users how you’re solving their problem. Do you need a fancy sign-up page, or (to begin with) even payment options?

Build it quick and cheap.

Summary

1. Ask yourself what user problem your solving

2. Start by building for the few, not the many

3. Give yourself a timeline and constantly evaluate features

4. Do things that don’t scale

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Knowing when its time to release

If your product is anything near perfect, you left it too late. It’s hard not to make everything absolutely perfect, but you risk wasting valuable time, and it will only be a few key features you build that you end up focusing and iterating on.

When you have the absolute minimum product developed that allows users to use your product, release it. The idea is to present users with your rough solution to start refining it; your first development won’t be anything near what you have in version one.

Once your product is made live, don’t expect users to rush to sign up when you first release your product. You’ll need to be proactive in getting users to know about it. There is a lot to acquiring your first 100 users, and perhaps that’s for a future post, but you want to start advertising your product in places where your users are active; think about who you’re targeting, where they are active online, and how you can have them interested in your product.

Ashu and I (co-founders) built TryHackMe for ourselves and was a side project we loved creating. After sharing the first version with a few friends, the word quickly got around about our product - in the first few months, we posted useful articles about TryHackMe on cyber security sub-reddits, social media and even convinced our Universities to use it within computer science classes.

Summary

1. If your product is perfect, you’ve left it too late

2. Don’t expect people to actively sign up when your product is first live

Talking to users and iterating

Now that your product is available to the public, you have something to show users. You want to understand your user’s needs, validate the assumptions you’ve made when developing, and gather information to start building a user-centric product.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when interviewing users

• 👥 Speak to more than 1 user - Speak to a few users, don’t let one user dictate the entire product. You’ll waste a lot of time building a specific feature for one individual - validate it with multiple people.

• ✅ Prepare questions - Before a user interview, prepare what you’re going to ask. You want to form questions that help you build a better product. Ask yourself how you can form questions to help you achieve that?

• 🔁 Talk to users regularly, not once - Speaking to users is not a one-time thing. You’ll want to take your learnings from talking to them, iterate on your product and then talk to new (or existing) users to continue a close product feedback loop.

• 🤔 Ask for problems, not solutions - You want to deeply understand your user’s problems, and not ask them for solutions. If they had the right answer, they wouldn’t need you. It’s your job to discover, build and continuously improve a solution.

Talking to users is an art. You want to ask questions that will help you understand how to provide value to customers best. You are building a product for them after all, so why shouldn't they get a say?

TryHackMe’s first version was extremely underdeveloped, and users could just about use the product. However, we were proactive in talking to customers and making improvements. We found users were happy to give feedback, and it developed champions as they saw TryHackMe improve day over day.

Founding companies with big pivots

Talking to users and witnessing their behavior can lead to ground-breaking product changes or complete pivots. Here are a few stories that describe how applications loved by millions today started off very differently in the early days:

• Instagram - Did you know that Instagram was first called “Burbn” and was originally a whiskey app? The founders noticed how people were using the app and found the photo-sharing part was highly loved. The app then pivoted to a dedicated photo-sharing application, rebranded as Instagram, and acquired by Facebook (for $1B) less than 2y after being founded (now worth >$100B)

• Slack - The popular messaging application Slack started out as a game called Glitch. The game had strong internal communication functionality, and they found it more valuable to users than the game itself. They quickly pivoted into messaging and were later acquired by SalesForce (for $27.7B).

The takeaway? Speak to users. If these products didn’t change, they wouldn’t have existed today.

Things you don’t need to do yet

Make sure you’re always focused on high-impact tasks. There are a few things you don’t need to do yet that I’ve seen many waste time on:

• 🏗️ Making it scalable - you want to validate your idea as quickly as possible, don’t waste time and money making your app scale to millions of users when you’ll most likely only have a handful using it in the first few weeks/months. Validate, then scale.

• ™️ Trademark - Do you need a trademark for your product immediately? Again, 9 out of 10 businesses fail, and the risk of failing is high. Increase your chances of success by focusing on solving your user’s problems, not protecting your logo/name.

• 🌎 Think big but start with a short-term plan - Your product and company vision could be very different from day 1 of release to day 90. You should have a plan and vision in your head, but develop a short-term strategy with long-term considerations. Once your product is validated, then it’s time to sit down and plan far into the future.

• 🗑️ Low-impact rebuilds - If you’re a technical founder, don’t fall into the trap of repeatedly redesigning your applications tech stack. I’ve seen founders rebuild useless parts of the product (such as their authentication systems) multiple times. Don’t waste time rebuilding unnecessarily.

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Here are a few reasons its better to start younger:

• 💸 Money - 9 in 10 startups fail, and there is a high personal risk when founding a company, which comes with unnecessary pressure. As a young entrepreneur, you’re less likely to have a mortgage, a family that relies on you, or other life-dependent financial commitments.

• 🕒 Time - With fewer responsibilities, you can invest more time into your startup, which would otherwise be spent on school, work, compulsory activities or family.

• 🙃 Naivety - Founding a company is hard work, and people often underestimate the work required to get it on its feet. If you know just how hard something will be (short and long-term), you’re much less likely to keep going. This can also force you to think about (and innovate) solutions to problems in untraditional but better ways.

Need some confidence as to why you should start now? YCombinator (YC), a technology startup accelerator, released a few stats that will encourage you:

• 52% of YC’s $90 billion dollar company founders were under 28 years old

• The oldest person to found a billion-dollar company (that YC invested in) was 50

There are also other reasons that can give you an edge as a young founder, such as being brought up in the digital age (being more familiar with technology) and having greater energy and enthusiasm. However, there are disadvantages to be mindful of:

• 🫠 You’re not always taken seriously - Some customers or companies you want to partner with may perceive younger entrepreneurs as inexperienced or not serious.

• 💼 Lack of commercial (and life) experience - in the early days you wear many hats as a founder and won’t have as much practical experience to lean into. Finding a co-founder, networking (or hiring) with smart people and learning through books/podcasts can help but still won’t substitute pure experience.

I don’t believe having less financial resources is that much of a downside. Having limited resources makes you more scrappy, and rather than burning aggressively through your raised capital, you’re forced into finding efficient and scalable solutions to start.

However, capital can play a big part in growth, from your user acquisition strategy or product development to hiring talent, but it is possible to scale profitably without it. You can seek investment, but I’d highly recommend you validate your idea as quickly as possible, fail fast, and (if needed) pivot - you don’t need much to start in 2023.

This doesn’t mean you can’t start and succeed in starting a company if you’re older, but take the opportunity whilst you’re younger and can afford to fail.

You’d be surprised how young some of the most successful founders are - shown in the image below:

• Mark Zuckerberg, founded Facebook at 19 from his University dorm room after his failed “Fashmash” project was forcefully shutdown.

• Evan Spiegel, founded Snapchat at 22 whilst at University after being inspired by a class project which evolved into building a destructible photo app.

• Brian Chesky, founded Airbnb at 27 after being unable to find a hotel for a design conference in 2008.

• Drew Houston, founded Dropbox at 24 after forgetting his USB flash drive when traveling in 2007.

• Patrick Collison, founded Stripe at 19 after dropping out of University to pursue entrepreneurial ventures

• Whitney Herd, founded Bumble at 20 and was also a founder of Tinder.

All of these companies were started by people no smarter than you. Even if you start and fail, you gain experience, which snowballs into your next venture. Everyone has ideas, but people rarely act on them - maybe it’s because you think you don’t have enough experience or are telling yourself you don’t have time; if it’s important enough, you’ll make the time.

Start whilst you’re young. Start now.

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