Why Every Startup Should Separate Vision from Product Pitch | Why Customers Nodding Doesn't Mean They'll Buy | The Hidden Danger of Broad Positioning Too Early | Brutal Truth About Building What Developers Want | Simon Rohrbach, CEO & Co-Founder at Plain

 Stop pitching the end state. Sell the smallest step that proves you can provide value.

This episode dives in on how to decouple a north‑star company vision from a scrappy, testable product pitch that customers can adopt today. You’ll learn how to use positioning as your lever - choose sharper category language, cut scope to true table stakes, and listen for unsolicited buy signals- to move from zero traction to real pull. 

On top, you’ll learn what the slowest, costliest way to validate an idea is; how to identify table stakes; and the signals that tell you when to broaden your ICP. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• 01:35 - From “Stripe for Support” to reality: what we missed
• 03:48 - API‑first exposes every seam; validation speed plummets
• 07:59 - The worst enterprise pitch: “engineers, please write more code”
• 11:23 - Name your category—or wear Zendesk/Intercom’s handcuffs
• 16:06 - Set true table stakes; timebox the MVP ruthlessly
• 21:02 - Buy‑now signals: users volunteer payment without a hard sell
• 23:49 - Ethical pre‑selling: describe the future, then sprint to it
• 25:12 - Turn case studies into copy—speak customers’ exact language
• 27:38 - Vertical → use case → market: DevTools → Technical Support → B2B
• 30:54 - Outrun feature spreadsheets with a customer collaboration thesis
• 40:41 - What collaboration means: Slack escalations, issue trackers, shared context
• 47:15 - Map features to FRT, CSAT, retention—not “shiny UI” claims
• 50:34 - Homepage discipline: kill vanity metrics and shortcut bragging
• 52:21 - 70/30 rule: discovery + founder conviction against higher‑order shifts

Creators and Guests

Host

Pascal Unger

Co-founder / Managing Partner at focal.vc We lead pre-seeds in North America with up to $1M: We exclusively back AI native software startups at the very start. Thereafter, we help them get off the ground better and faster, supported by a network > 200 GTM executives. That's our singular, unwavering focus.

What is focal podcast?

Pivotal early lessons of today's best startups.

Welcome to the focal podcast where we go deep with some of today's best founders and operators on ONE crucial lessons from their early days.

This podcast is not the usual "highlight reel" startup podcast that goes one inch deep across 20+ topics. Rather, we ask the questions you’d ask if you were sitting across from them. No fluff, just the real, actionable insights you’d get if these founders were mentoring you 1on1.

We cover topics including:

- What worked and why.
- Costly mistakes and how they fixed them.
- Frameworks that truly made a difference.
- Tactics to move faster.
- What they wish they’d known sooner.
- And much more!

"Only a fool learns from their own mistakes. The wise learn from the mistakes of others."