In the fast-paced world of tech scaleups, time is a currency as valuable as funding. Move too slowly, and you risk irrelevance. Build too much too soon, and you waste resources on things that never see the light of day. So how do you strike the right balance?

On Wisdom From Wizards, brought to you by Caribou Strategic, I sat down with Carlos Chavez, CEO at Cytrex, to discuss a lesson he learned firsthand — why speed beats perfection every time.

The Cost of Overbuilding

Carlos has been through the scaleup journey before. In a previous company that was eventually acquired, his team built a ton of features — only to realize later that many of them weren’t actually used by real customers. The effort, time, and infrastructure investments were wasted. Why? Because they focused too much on what they thought users wanted instead of what users actually needed.

His advice to founders and product teams:

✅ Validate demand before perfecting anything.

✅ Prioritize real user feedback over internal assumptions.

✅ Optimize only after ensuring there’s actual need and traction.

The Lean Approach to Product-Market Fit

If you’re pre-product-market fit, Carlos emphasizes that your number one goal should be making sure people love what you’re building. High engagement, strong Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and genuine enthusiasm from users are signals that you’re on the right track. Only once you have that solid foundation should you focus on refining and optimizing.

His mantra? Build fast. Validate faster. Improve as you go.

Why This Matters for Tech Scaleups

For tech scaleups, this philosophy is critical. The temptation to add features, polish endlessly, and delay launch can slow you down at a stage when agility is key. Instead, focusing on solving real problems and getting your product into users’ hands quickly can be the difference between stagnation and scale.

Want more insights like this from top tech leaders? Get a weekly recap of Wisdom From Wizards episodes — and a free eBook of my Amazon bestseller, Product Marketing Wisdom HERE.