By The Good Words Team
April 28, 2024
In the dynamic landscape of venture capital-backed startups, every decision holds the potential to shape the trajectory of a company. One often underestimated yet crucial investment for these businesses is documentation. While not the flashiest aspect of revenue generation, documentation plays a pivotal role in scaling, productivity, cost reduction, and investor returns.
So, what value does documentation bring to startups and why is it needed?
Lower Customer Onboarding Costs
One of the key benefits of documentation is its ability to lower customer onboarding costs. For VC-backed startups looking to scale rapidly, this can be a game-changer. By providing comprehensive documentation, companies can enable customers to onboard themselves, reducing the need for costly one-on-one support. This not only allows companies to onboard customers at scale but also increases their user base, ultimately driving investor returns more quickly. In many cases, documentation is the most cost-effective way to scale the customer onboarding process, making it a wise investment for VC-backed companies.
Documentation as a Sales Tool
Beyond its role in customer onboarding, documentation can also be a powerful sales tool. Buyers often use documentation to assess whether a product will meet their needs, without ever having to speak to a sales or support representative. By providing clear documentation, companies can help buyers make informed decisions, supporting revenue growth over time.
Building Better Products with Technical Writers
A great technical writer can do more than just create documentation – they can help companies build better products. Technical writers can use and test a product as a customer would, making accessibility and usability recommendations, identifying bugs, and advocating for customers’ needs. By incorporating the expertise of a technical writer into the product development process, companies can ensure that their products meet the needs of their customers.
Saving Engineers’ Time and Increasing Productivity
Lastly, investing in dedicated technical writers can save engineers’ time and increase their productivity. By offloading the task of writing documentation to technical writers, engineers can focus on building products that the company can sell, rather than spending valuable time on documentation. This increases the efficiency of the engineering team and ensures that products in the pipeline are brought to market more quickly, driving investor returns.
By prioritizing documentation from day one, companies can scale their business, increase their user base, and build products that meet the needs of customers. This helps VC-backed startups position themselves for long-term success in the competitive tech space.