So – you are a technical founder building a SaaS company. And now you’ve raised your first seven-figure round from professional investors. Congratulations!

The objective for the next phase is to nail your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), win (more) clients and prove product/market fit. Doing this will take you to your Series A valuation milestone.

Now your investors ask for a product roadmap. But you already know how to build great software. So surely making one is just a waste of time?

Why do we need roadmaps?

Your roadmap is likely going to iterate a lot. Just like your sales playbook. Is it even worth making one?

A written roadmap helps you align your priorities with your team and your board. And writing one can even help crystallise your own thinking. It’s a good tool.

Smart people are often good at solving problems. And for smart founders with VC funding, it is tempting to try to solve too many of the problems they come across.

But fundamentally, the purpose of strategy is to concentrate your resources at the point of the biggest impact. A clear ICP and value proposition will help direct everything you do. A well-aligned roadmap helps ensure you can deliver on your customer promise – before you run out of money.

Sadly, more than 2/3 of the startups that raise a seed round never get to Series A. Even for those that get to Series A, more than half fail to return their invested capital.

And, cash is now scarce. We can no longer burn $ like it is 2021. For a software company, your tech roadmap is your future.

So your investors will want to sense-check that your roadmap is aligned with the ICP and the value proposition. And help you refocus if they think you are veering off course. That is an important role of your board.

How does it relate to sales?

Now, sales traction is key. That is the visible demonstration of product/market-fit. But it’s not enough. Many companies brute-force their way to initial revenue traction, only for sales growth to stall. And there is a big difference between landing a few clients and then getting to actual p/m-fit.

So your sales playbook helps clarify the direction your are taking. And your product roadmap explains how you get to the right destination, using the best route.

You can create one in a tool. Or you can make a simple one in google slides. But make one. Because this is the best way to get clarity around your company’s strategy and priorities. And in a fast-moving software company, that clarity is the key to your company’s future.

What are some objections?

It’s too hard / not worth the effort

Making a good roadmap can be tricky. And like a sales-playbook, it will take lots of iterations. But the roadmap sets the courses and prioritises your experiments and iterations. And that is exactly what they should be doing.

It is too difficult to estimate the effort required to deliver roadmap elements

Some developers are reluctant to make roadmaps as they are unsure how long things will take. Those concerns are perfectly valid. It can be super hard to predict how long something that’s never been done will take. So provide estimates as a starting point. And use those estimates to figure out whether you are on track.