The Design Partner Playbook: How to Rock SaaS Product-Market Fit & Make what Customers Actually Want

For SaaS founders, getting design partnerships right is the secret to winning the odds on startup survival. Few achieve product-market fit without it, but it's tricky to get one structured well. A few pointers here on getting it done without the overhead.

Design partners are the secret weapon for SaaS product validation.

SaaS startups need these programs because they provide crucial validation and refinement during the product development process, particularly before and during early market entry. With today's intense velocity to market, deep and meaningful customer feedback is essential to building while you fly. But you can't just ask your friends what they think about what you've made. You need something more scientific, unbiased, and clear.

I've been running design partner programs for the past decade, from innovating a new observability tool with engineers from Starbucks, Disney and AT&T, to finding early customers for AWS ML incubations, to supporting a startup in dialing in their human digital twin for busy knowledge workers who want to automate. This is what I know: astonishing amounts of founders don't have the help they need.