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Scott Belsky on the most common mistake founders make when building a product

January 22, 2025

“Every product has what we call a ‘first-mile experience’, which is the part of your product that the most customers will see. And it’s all drop-off from there. What gets people through the first-mile experience? First, you have to empathize with where that customer is at — whether they’re a consumer or an enterprise customer, in the first 30 seconds of that first mile of your product, I guarantee you, they’re lazy, vain, and selfish. They want to get through it fast. They want to look good to their boss or their friends or feel good about themselves. There needs to be some quick hit of feeling successful in that first mile for them to engage further.”

Ironically, the first-mile experience is the last thing companies and product people will focus on.

“Typically it’s the final mile before you launch where you’re like, ‘Oh wait, what should the onboarding be?’ or ‘What should the defaults be?’ That’s like a happenstance conversation towards the end of shipping when in fact that’s the only thing that every customer will ever see. So why not nail that?”

Scott takes this point even further:

“If you can really just nail the first-mile experience of your product — even if after that it’s all kind of crappy — you’re probably in the top 1% of products out there.”

Another interesting point Scott makes here is that optimizing the first-mile experience is something that you’ll have to continually work on because your customers change over time.

“Your first cohort of customers that used your product, those were early adopters — and your first-mile experience was nailed for them. But now [as you’ve grown] this new cohort of customers has started using your product that are no longer early adopters. They’re pragmatists. They’re not coming because they like to test and try new products. They’re coming because their boss told them they had to or they read some blog that said this was the best product in the space, and the first-mile needs to be different for them.”

Scott sums his point up as follows:

“Spend consistent time, forever on that first-mile experience of your product.”