Vikram Verma

This should be every entrepreneurs' #1 priority: Getting ruthless about what customers want (and giving it to them). Over the last decade, we've seen how easier funding has enabled startups to scale in the absence of revenue. In many cases, promising technologies haven’t translated to products that people will actually pay for. With economic downturns and lots of uncertainty, that luxury is gone. And that’s a good thing. Now, you’re forced to focus obsessively on what will actually drive revenue and bring in customers. Peripheral concerns, inflated budgets and side projects fade as you fight to stay in the game. From personal experience during the 2008 recession: At AppDynamics, that started with honing in on a very specific target customer that desperately needed our service. We went after companies, like Netflix, where application speeds were directly tied to revenue. Then, we streamlined our feature set to focus on one problem: helping engineers troubleshoot the root cause of slow software. This went hand in hand with fanatical attention to customer support. Nearly every day for two months, I drove 90 minutes from our office in San Francisco to Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos to observe our product in their environment and ensure it was delivering value. This focus enabled us to do something difficult back then: extend our runway. Ultimately, your main goal should be building a business that best serves the customers.