There's a constant tension in startups that doesn't get talked about enough.
You're balancing what's needed to close deals right now with what's needed to attract the next set of buyers.
And when there's pressure to drive revenue, the decision is obvious. You focus on the deal in front of you.
How It Plays Out
I've seen how this plays out.
At one company, we had a major feature tied to a live deal. It was a meaningful capability, something that could have a real impact beyond that one customer.
There was pressure to get it into a usable state quickly, so engineering pushed hard and got it out the door.
It made it into testing. And then problems showed up.
The feature worked in some cases, but not consistently across different environments. So it existed, it was being used in a narrow context, but it wasn't something you could confidently take to a broader market.
That's where it breaks down.
I went to get documentation so I could start building messaging and content around it. The answer was basically: "Check with docs, they might have something."
They didn't.
And that wasn't unusual.
In a lot of startups, "we need to move fast" becomes the reason documentation doesn't really happen. Features evolve quickly. Things change on the fly. Everyone gets used to operating without a clear, stable explanation of what something actually does. Sometimes, even the product manager is still piecing it together.
A Tough Spot for Product Marketing
That's a tough spot for product marketing.
You're trying to explain how something works, tie it to a real problem, and show why it matters — without a clear, shared understanding of the feature itself.
So you end up doing one of two things: guessing at the details, or avoiding specifics altogether.
Neither works.
At that point, you're not really marketing a feature. You're trying to reverse engineer it.
That feature may have helped move a specific deal forward. But for everyone else, it's not clear what it actually does, where it fits, or why they should care.
So new buyers don't engage the way you expect. Not because the idea isn't strong. Because the clarity isn't there.
The Fix
The solution isn't to slow engineering down. And it's not to deprioritize active deals.
It's to use product marketing differently.
Bring them in while the feature is being built. Have them sit in on the discussions. Let them document what's changing in real time. Give them rough outlines and let them flesh them out as things evolve.
It doesn't slow development down. But it does a few important things: you get a single source of truth for the feature across the company, product marketing becomes deeply familiar with the feature early, and messaging and positioning start to take shape before the feature is done.
By the time it's ready for a broader audience, you're not starting from zero.
And if bringing another role into early discussions isn't realistic, there are tools that can help close the gap. You can point tools like Mintlify or Swimm at your codebase and generate baseline documentation. At a bare minimum, this gives product marketing and product managers something to work from instead of starting from scratch.
The Bigger Point
Shipping fast matters. Closing deals matters.
But if clarity isn't keeping up, you're making it harder for the next set of buyers to understand why you matter.
And that's where the future pipeline comes from.