Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Evans: Sell existing products to matching buyers before building new features

David Evans · Harnessing AI through Seed-Stage Investments: Insights from David Evans of Sentiero Ventures · Jun 2, 2025 · at 23:17

David Evans, Managing Partner at Sentiero Ventures, discusses budget and focus trade-offs between product development and sales for seed-stage startups.

0:00 / 1:05exact quote · 65.4s
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“You built the thing. People are buying the thing, find more people that will buy that thing. Because the insight there is that a lot of times what we tend to do is we tend to look past the people that are already paying us. Right. And you go and you look and you realize that, well, there's a customer site, we've got 30 customers and they all have a particular profile. Well, how many people or companies are there in the world that have that same profile? And the notion there is if there's a thousand companies in the world that have that profile, How about you try going after those thousand companies? Cause there's a pretty good probability that you don't need to add a single feature to go after those thousand companies. Now, it's not to be said that you don't continue to invest in product development, but if you've got that kind of momentum and you've got that shape of a go to market funnel you know, it's best to lean into that growth and do more of what's working. Rather than looking at new product development, hoping that those new features work.”

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