Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

Entrepreneur, Startup CTO/CEO, Bootstrapped to a 9 figure SaaS exit, founder of @fullscalekc, subscribe to my newsletter about product thinking for engineers newsletter.productdriven.com Kansas City, MO Joined October 2021

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

13 hours ago

Why is it called a startup? Uncertainty. A startup is a bet on something new. A new product. A new market. A new use case. Uncertainty is baked into the name. Once that uncertainty is resolved, it stops being a startup. It becomes a business. Uber once looked like a wild…

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

a day ago

If you read more books than everyone else, can you advance faster than everyone else? Interesting thought?!? I don't even read books. ADHD makes it hard for me. 😔

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 days ago

Stop thinking like an engineer when you test. Start thinking like someone who just paid for your product.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

4 days ago

The real job of leadership isn't setting big goals. It's cutting through the noise so your team knows exactly what to do today. Most teams are paralyzed by options. Great leaders create focus.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

4 days ago

While others overanalyze, I trust 20+ years of instincts to see the path. Leadership is clarity, not complexity.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

5 days ago

Code creates software engineers. Customers create CTOs. The difference? Engineers perfect the HOW. CTOs obsess over the WHY. If your team doesn't know why their work matters, you're not leading. You're just managing tasks... Customer focus isn't optional. It's the job.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

6 days ago

80% of features are rarely or never used. AI can now build them 10x faster. Congrats, you can now waste money at unprecedented speed.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

6 days ago

Your product team spending 700 prompts on the perfect mockup? Your engineers could've built it in the time it took to write those prompts. Sometimes the best AI strategy is turning it off.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

a week ago

Best engineers I've worked with aren't the most technical. They're the ones who can talk to a customer on Monday and ship a solution by Friday. AI makes this superpower 10x more valuable.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

a week ago

"It depends" has been the answer to every tech question for 25 years. Should we use AI? It depends. Should we use microservices? It depends. Should we document this? It depends. AI didn't change this. It's made it worse.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

a week ago

We spent 25 years separating engineers from customers. Now AI can write the code. Guess what matters now? Understanding the customer. The irony is beautiful.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

AI makes bad requirements fail faster. Your engineers don't need better prompts. They need to know WHY they're building something. No amount of AI can fix "we'll figure it out as we go."

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

Software engineers think their code is the product. It's not. Code doesn't magically transform into money. Solving problems does. But most devs are "mushrooms in the basement" - kept in the dark about what customers actually need. No wonder 90% of startups fail.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

"Introverted people don't say no very well" - Karell Ste-Marie Engineers agreeing to impossible deadlines, bad requirements, feature bloat can KILL your product. Sometimes they'd rather pull 80-hour weeks than admit something's a terrible idea... Encourage them to think…

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

Asked hundreds of CTOs how they got the role. Half said: started their own company. The other half: Slow corporate climb. Guess which group actually understands both code AND customers? When your mortgage depends on product-market fit, you learn fast or fail faster.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

Most CTOs become CTOs by accident. Started a company, needed code, became "technical cofounder." That trial by fire taught me more in 18 months than 15 years climbing corporate ladders would've. Because customers don't care about your architecture. They care about solutions.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

Your dev team doesn't need more process or better tools. They need to understand WHY they're building. But 90% of engineers never talk to customers. They just get filtered requirements through 5 layers of management. No wonder startups fail. Nobody's solving real problems.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

Software engineers are brilliant at solving problems in isolation. Executives are brilliant at strategy without technical context. Both are building in parallel universes wondering why nothing works. The companies that work? They figure out how to translate between worlds.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

2 weeks ago

Every CTO thinks AI is about writing code faster. Wrong. It's about finding out you're building the wrong thing on day 1 instead of month 3. The bottleneck was never your devs. It was your decision speed.

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Matt Watson @mattwatsonkc

3 weeks ago

We're validating features in 24 hours that used to take 2-week sprints. Not because AI codes faster. Because PMs can finally show users something real before devs write a single line. Your competition is already doing this.