Product & Design Skills

Position an AI product when everyone claims AI and skeptics call it \"just a wrapper.\" Find the real wedge (data, workflow, trust, domain), make reliability the differentiator, answer \"won't the big labs just build this,\" and stop leading with \"AI-powered.\" Use when your AI or dev tool blends into a sea of similar demos, buyers doubt the accuracy, or you can't say why you win when the model is a commodity.

Get the first 50 real users through channels the founder's ICP already uses. Use when the product shipped and nobody came, the founder is \"posting more\" with no result, or is reaching for paid ads before product-market fit.

Build authority by teaching the problem space, not announcing features. Use when the founder finds \"marketing\" distasteful and does none, publishes only product updates, or wants a sustainable content and GitHub-README strategy that developers actually respect.

Measure GTM with the metrics that matter (net developer retention, DREAM funnel) instead of vanity numbers. Use when the founder has dashboards full of stars and pageviews but can't tell if go-to-market is working, or is optimizing acquisition over a leaky bucket.

Plan a developer launch (Show HN, Reddit, Product Hunt) that earns goodwill instead of a flaming. Use when the founder is sitting on a launch out of fear, wants to \"go viral,\" or is about to post a press-release-style announcement to a developer community.

Turn developer love into revenue by enabling champions and choosing a GTM model. Use when developers adopt the free tier but nobody pays, when the founder is cold-selling the VP instead of arming the developer, or when picking between open-source, PLG, inbound, and sales-led.

Build a positioning and narrative where the developer is the hero and a real trend is the villain. Use when the messaging describes the product instead of the problem, sounds like every competitor, or has no urgency because nothing is at stake.

Before showing the founder any substantive GTM deliverable (positioning, value prop, homepage, launch post, pricing, sales script, the brief or roadmap), stress-test it against the standard as an independent critic, because the agent that wrote it is the worst judge of whether it is good. Use as a gate right before presenting work, or when the founder asks whether something is actually strong.

After the founder brief, turn it into an honest diagnosis and a prioritized, stage-aware GTM roadmap saved as docs/gtm-cofounder/gtm-roadmap.md. This is the hub the founder returns to every session to see where they are and the single next move. Use right after start-here, whenever the founder doesn't know what to work on next, wants a plan instead of a one-off task, or is drowning in disconnected tactics.

Run developer customer discovery via a Technical Advisory Board (TAB). Use when the founder has never interviewed a user who isn't a friend, is inventing messaging from a conference room, or is guessing at the roadmap instead of hearing the pain firsthand.

Structure a dev-tool homepage that converts developers into champions. Use when the landing page is written for the buyer instead of the developer, reads as salesy, buries what the product does, or makes it hard to start. Pairs with the ShipReady homepage audit.

Turn a curious developer into an activated one: the docs, the quickstart, and the first-run experience that gets them to their first real win fast, and back again. Use when people sign up or star the repo but never get it working, come once and never return, or you're about to pour traffic into a first-run that leaks.

Write a developer value proposition that is specific, provable, and free of puffery. Use when the messaging leans on \"powerful,\" \"better,\" \"seamless,\" or \"best-in-class,\" when claims have no proof, or when the same line is supposed to reach both the developer and the buyer.

Define a real ICP and the developer personas in the sale. Use when the founder says the product is \"for developers,\" can't name who would say no, or is marketing to whoever holds the budget instead of who actually adopts.