Much of the writing on feature prioritisation for software teams describes what happens in large organisations, almost always backed by venture capital.

This doesn't reflect what actually happens in small, bootstrapped companies that are not chasing hypergrowth.

And yet, there are way more software companies that fit the "bootstrapped, with 20-50 employees" description than fit the "back by venture capital, growing like a rocket ship" category.

So we interviewed the smaller, bootstrapped teams to reveal how feature prioritisation actually happens. Not how it is described in books but how teams decide, given limited resources, incomplete data, hard-to-predict future events, and the reality of human behaviour.

Here's an example of how what happens in large companies with external funding is removed from what you and I are doing: Slack - so I've been told - has a product manager who is solely responsible for their pricing page. A pricing page! With its own product manager!

It's not helpful for you as the founder of a 20-person company to try to emulate what's happening at Zoom, Slack, or Notion. You'll make bad decisions if you do so.

This is why we've been very selective in the type of software company we talk to.