How to apply a product mindset?

This article reflects a talk delivered at the 2022 VC Platform Global Summit in New York. Minor adaptations have been made to accommodate recent updates and the written medium.

Applying a product mindset to test VC platform initiatives

As Head of Platform at maze, a European impact investing firm based in Lisbon, we have been applying a product mindset to test our platform initiatives at our venture capital (VC) fund (MSM) and scale our impact.

A product mindset in this context is a way of approaching our platform challenges (i.e. which platform component should I build next) in a way that creates the most value to the users founders we back while contributing to the goals of the VC companies we work with. In this article, I will explain what that means in practice.

Step 1 👉 Know your why

A product mindset starts with knowing your firm’s ‘why’. Ours is to prove that social and environmental impact ventures are the greatest economic opportunity of our time.

Our platform goal is a derivative of our why as it exists to grow the social and environmental outcomes of the companies we back. Why? Because our investment thesis sits on the premise that when the impact of the ventures we back grows, their revenues grow too. There are three immediate consequences to this premise:

1. The focus of our platform work is post-investment.
2. Everything we build is geared towards enhancing impact outcomes.
3. Our target audience is, first and foremost, the founders.

© VC Platform Community

Step 2 👉 Identify the top challenges to be addressed by platform

Many frameworks can help you here. We profiled our founders following the value proposition canvas that separates: jobs-to-done, pains and gains. Here we write down our assumptions about our founders:

• What are they trying to get done? Their jobs.
• What annoys them? Their pains.
• And what delights them? Their gains.

© Maze Impact