The age of Waterfall and Agile is over. Why? Because those methodologies leave out the most crucial resource your company has: customers. When it comes to building a great product, a great team, and a great brand, relying solely on the ideas of internal stakeholders will get you nowhere. The key to achieving HYPERGROWTH is to always be listening to — and communicating with — your customers. The key is being customer-driven.
Today, there’s no excuse for not communicating with customers on a daily basis. Messaging has exploded, new generations are focused on 1:1 communication by default, and artificial intelligence is finally coming so we can deliver 1:1 at scale. So why would you build a product, or a company, without leaning into the advantages of that ecosystem?
About the Author
David Cancel is best known for creating hypergrowth products and product teams at companies such as Drift, HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery, and Compete. He has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, and Fast Company, and has guest lectured on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Bentley, and other universities. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Drift, the world’s first conversational marketing and sales platform.
