Free users never become customers.
The trial ends before people reach useful value.
Product DNA + GTM DNA · The applied course
Build a growth strategy your product
can support.
Find the friction between your product, pricing, customers and go-to-market plan. Get your team working from the same facts.
On-demand learning · Working templates · Your own product
02 / GO-TO-MARKETFind your
Find your
way into the market.
MarketUnderstand the terrain
BeachheadA segment you can win
ICPBuyers who can adopt now
ChannelsA route that fits
01 / PRODUCT DNA
What has to be true
for growth to work?
PricingWhat the bill grows with
ActivationThe first useful outcome
RetentionA reason to keep using it
ExpansionHow account value grows
Describe it. Find evidence. Agree.
Built for lean software teams
Founders / Product leaders / Growth teams
Why more execution
isn’t fixing growth.
The product decisions behind stalled activation, difficult sales and revenue that won’t expand.
Product DNA
+ GTM DNA
You’re shipping more.
Growth still feels harder
than it should.
Building gets faster. Content gets faster.
The assumptions underneath them go unchecked.
Every deal needs another feature.
Your target accounts need a product you haven’t built.
Customers like you. Spending stays flat.
There’s no natural path to more seats, usage or modules.
Good conversations never turn into deals.
Your sales motion costs more than the deal can support.
Your content attracts the wrong people.
The message, channel and buying situation don’t line up.
The team keeps changing direction.
Product, engineering and revenue have different versions of the plan.
AI makes it easier to execute the same mistakes faster.
Speed is useful.
A shared direction
makes it count.
AI can ship the feature, write the campaign and build the page. It can also scale a strategy nobody has checked.
One set of facts.
Fewer conflicting priorities.
Agree on who the product serves, how customers get value and what has to happen for growth to work.
Give your team, and the AI tools they use, the same context for the next decision.
A familiar mismatch
The trial wasn’t the problem.
The path to value was.
The team wants self-serve sales. Every customer needs a migration, an administrator and three weeks of setup before the product helps.
Changing the signup page won’t remove that work.
Find the friction in your product →
Two frameworks.
One shared view
of the business.
Understand what your product makes possible.
Then choose the market and motion that fit.
Product DNA
See how people get value, what they pay for, why they stay and how accounts can grow.
Explore all 10 dimensions +
Pricing architecture
What is the price attached to?
Seats · Usage · Modules · Outcomes · Flat or hybridUser topology
Which roles depend on each other?
Individual · Admin and operator · Multi-team · ApprovalsGrowth motion
How do customers find and adopt you?
Self-serve · Sales-led · Partners · HybridValue delivery
When does the customer receive value?
Continuous · Periodic · Event-triggeredBuyer versus user
Who pays, uses, champions and approves?
Same person · Budget holder · Buying committeeActivation pattern
What is the first real customer outcome?
First session · Import · Configuration · Team adoptionRetention moat
What makes staying increasingly valuable?
Switching costs · Network effects · Workflow · Data gravityComplexity and time to value
What stands between signup and useful value?
Migration · Integration · Setup · Security · TimeExpansion model
What can grow inside an account?
Seats · Usage · Modules · Upgrades · NoneCompetitive positioning
Why would a particular buyer choose you?
Alternative · Difference · Switching friction · Proof
GTM DNA
Choose a reachable first market, define the right buyers and match your channels to the economics.
Explore all 8 components +
Market DNA
What kind of market are you entering?
Fragmentation · Sophistication · Regulation · Switching · Replacement · IncumbentsBeachhead
Where can you win with today’s product?
Reachable · Focused · CompoundingICP before TAM
Who has the problem and can adopt now?
Need · Budget · Deployment · Reachability · UrgencyGrowth motion
How can this product realistically grow?
Self-serve · Sales-led · Partners · HybridChannel-product fit
Where can you reach buyers economically?
Search and content · Outbound · Partners · CommunitiesSales motion and hiring
What selling work must happen first?
Evaluation · Assistance · Deal economics · First hireCompetitive positioning
Which alternative are you replacing?
Creation or resegmentation · Segment depth · ProofInvestor read
Which growth assumptions need evidence?
Capital needs · Adoption · Retention · Market reach
The disagreements are the finding.
Get product, engineering and revenue to agree on the same facts.
Make the decisions
that change the economics.
See where your product and growth strategy pull apart, and what you can do about it.
01 / PRICING
Make growth worth more.
A customer adds users and gets more value. Your flat fee stays the same.
Identify what can expand inside an account, then assess pricing and packaging that can grow with it.
A clearer path from customer success to revenue.
02 / RETENTIONGive customers
Give customers
a reason to stay.
A useful feature gets attention. That alone doesn’t make your product part of the customer’s work.
Find what makes repeat use valuable, where team adoption matters and whether expansion is built into the product.
Prioritize the product changes that support lasting use.
03 / POSITIONINGReach buyers who
Reach buyers who
have a reason to move.
A large market means little if your buyers can’t switch, can’t onboard or don’t feel the problem yet.
Choose a reachable segment. Connect its buying trigger to a useful promise and evidence it can trust.
Sharper targeting. A message grounded in buyer needs.
Leave with decisions
your team can use.
Your product is the working example.
The output is a plan you can act on.
Inside the working materialsTry the first exercise ↗
- 01
Your Product DNA profile
A shared description of how the product works commercially.
- 02
Your market and ICP map
Who you can serve now, and where to go next.
- 03
Your motion and channel plan
A realistic route from discovery to adoption.
- 04
Your friction register
Contradictions worth fixing before you scale them.
- 05
Your decision and evidence plan
What to change, what to test and who owns it.
The course
Work on your product
as you learn.
Six modules. Practical exercises.
A clearer way to decide what comes next.
01Start with shared factsSurface the assumptions hiding inside your strategy.+
- Why execution can amplify friction
- Separate evidence from assumptions
- Bring product, engineering and revenue together
02Describe your Product DNAWrite the ten sentences your team needs to agree on.+
- Pricing, value delivery and expansion
- User roles, buyers and first value
- Complexity, retention, motion and position
03Find the contradictionsFind where the product and the growth plan pull apart.+
- Check the retention mechanism
- Investigate structural friction
- Use examples without copying their strategy
04Choose a reachable marketFocus on customers who can adopt what you have.+
- Read the market before its size
- Choose a beachhead and ICP
- Map buyer awareness and adoption work
05Match your route to your productConnect channels, sales and positioning to the economics.+
- Choose a motion and test its economics
- Assess channels and positioning
- Understand hiring and investor implications
06Align and decideTurn the diagnostic into changes, owners and tests.+
- Run the cross-functional session
- Prioritize changes and evidence
- Build a repeatable review brief
Learn it.
Apply it.
Make the next call.
Work through your own product, then use the findings to choose what deserves your team’s time.
- 01
Understand the pattern.
Video and written lessons explain the structural choices behind common growth problems.
- 02
Map your business.
Use the profiles and exercises to separate what you know from what you still assume.
- 03
Agree, then test.
Bring the team together. Prioritize the friction, assign an owner and choose evidence that would change your mind.
A better next experiment.
A clearer reason to run it.
Turn “we should try this” into a specific hypothesis, a useful signal and a decision the result will inform.
Try the first exercise →
Jake McMahon / ProductQuantMeet your instructor
Product. Content. Sales.
The connections matter.
I work across product strategy, analytics, content and selling software. That range helps me spot the gaps between what a product does, how it’s explained and how it’s sold.
Sales experience
Sold into monday.com, Guardio, Circlesup, NewDayUSA, FormDr and Scale Insights.
Helped agencies close $16K–$38K deals and SaaS companies close $10K–$100K+ deals, including one relationship reaching $500K in customer lifetime value.
Content experience
Written for thirdweb, Payoneer, monday.com, monday dev, CYE, Tasq, Spikerz and 8fig.
“I built and ran the content and sales system that helped grow Queue to $1.5M ARR.”
For the people making
the product and growth
decisions together.
Founders. Product leaders. People responsible for growth at software companies.
Bring a real product and customer evidence. Work through the exercises yourself, then bring the team into the decisions.
Prefer to work through it live? Explore workshops →Product DNA + GTM DNA
Get the course
when it opens.
Video and written lessons.
Working templates.
Your own product, worked through.
- 6 modules · 18 planned lessons
- Product DNA + GTM DNA profiles
- Market, ICP and channel exercises
- Friction register + decision plan
Get early-access updates and the free team diagnostic.
Just want the diagnostic? Use it now →The details,
before you decide.
Is this a self-paced course?+
Yes. The planned format combines video and written lessons with exercises you apply to your own product. Join the list for enrollment updates.
Do I need a product already?+
A real product and customer evidence make the diagnostic more useful. At idea stage, use it to name the assumptions you still need to test.
Can I use the exercises with my team?+
Yes, the exercises are designed to bring product, engineering and revenue together. Course-access and file-license options will be published when enrollment opens.
Will this tell me to choose PLG or enterprise sales?+
It helps you assess which motions fit your setup, value delivery, buyers and economics. The next step may be to change part of the product before changing the motion.
Can Jake review our product personally?+
You can request a separate private workshop to work through the diagnostic together.
What does it cost, and when will it launch?+
The price, access terms and enrollment date are not announced yet. Joining the list is free. You can use the diagnostic today without joining.