Venture Development Life Cycle (VDLC)

Modeling

• Reverse engineer from your customer’s problem; bottoms up unit economics modeling designed for organic growth

• Your pricing plan should be the first step of product development because it narrows down who the buyer is, articulates what growth looks like, and forces a tight scope on the product plan

Strategizing

• Specify GTM motion and prioritize feature roadmap

• This is where you take the theoretical model and create a tactical playbook for approaching both market and product development

Building

• Develop a sellable version of the key few features that enable customer success

• This includes producing workflows for onboarding and payment—treat the growth funnel as an equal part of the product

Selling

• Ask your list of potential customers to buy

• Whether acquiring new logos or getting existing customers to adopt new features, active selling of functional products is the best way to test hypotheses and garner market feedback

Assessing

• Identify what’s working and what isn’t in order to modify approach as needed

• Continuously improve internal measurement processes to capture, and synthesize data, then translate into actionable plans