About Founder’s Newsletter

My name is Tadas Labudis, and this is my personal newsletter, where I write about entrepreneurship and building digital products.

Product is at the core of every startup. When your product solves a customer’s problem, they are happy to pay you for it, which becomes your business's foundation. But navigating that first product is the ultimate test and one of the main reasons 90% of startups fail.

My whole career revolved around building products in startups. I created products as a solopreneur, as the very first PM hire, as part of a group of PMs, as a venture-backed founder, and as a product director in a scaleup. Regardless of the industry, company stage of the company or available resources, the core mission was always the same - figure out the customer’s problem and build a product that solves it before running out of money.

Whilst not all products I built were successes (welcome to the world of startups!), along the way, I picked up some crucial lessons that I’d like to share with the community.

Some of the topics I’m planning to cover in this newsletter:

• Customer Development

• Product Discovery and Experimentation

• Developing product strategy and vision

• Building the first product team

• Building the first product process

• Founder-PM relationship

• Product-market fit

If you are an early-stage startup founder navigating your first product and building out your product team, this newsletter is for you.