From Chaos to Clarity: How ThinkGo is Helping Software Founders Cut Through the Noise
Many software startup founders say the early days can feel like building a plane while flying it. Plans shift week to week. One minute it’s about product-market fit; the next it’s about rewriting the pricing model at 2am.
Devin Deen has been there a few times. This time, with his new venture ThinkGo, the seasoned strategist and Silicon Valley veteran is handing early-stage founders a lifeline. A lightweight system for turning confusion into clarity.
“It’s not the product that kills momentum, often it’s the chaos around it,“ says Deen. “ThinkGo is about helping founders focus on what matters, when it matters.”
The Messy Middle
ThinkGo is purpose-built for startups caught in what Deen calls “the messy middle”—that unpredictable stretch between a minimum viable product (MVP) and sustainable market traction.
“It’s that point where you’ve launched something, you’ve got a few customers, and now the real work begins,” he explains. “Suddenly, you need structure but not too much. You need strategy but not a 60 page slide deck. That’s where most founders get stuck.”
Drawing on 25+ years of experience across startups, SaaS ventures, and consulting, Deen distilled global strategy frameworks from the likes of Strategyzer, The Chasm Group, and Lean Startup into simple, actionable tools. “There are plenty of smart models out there,” he says. “The trick is making them usable by real people, under real pressure.”
Global Career, Local Vision
Before launching ThinkGo in mid 2023, Deen built a career that spanned Silicon Valley startups and New Zealand consultancies. He began as a US Marine Corps officer, graduating from the Naval Academy with a degree in systems engineering before serving as a communications officer.
It’s a foundation that instilled in him not only discipline and resilience, but a deeply analytical mindset – skills he later applied to the fast-moving world of tech startups.
After leaving the military, Deen was headhunted to join a SaaS startup in San Jose during the dot-com boom. That experience gave him his first close-up look at the power of customer experience in software.
“I’ve been around technology pretty much my whole life – though more on the application of technology side,” he says. At that startup, I led the customer success team, onboarding new clients, and that’s when I really saw how critical customer experience is – especially with early adopters.”
That insight stuck with him. Early success in software, he realised, depends not just on the product but on everything that surrounds it.
“The product’s one side, but it’s the stuff around it that really counts and helps you attract and retain customers. Marketing, sales, pricing, customer care. And more than that, it starts with people and culture.”
After relocating to New Zealand with his Kiwi wife, Deen became deeply involved in the local tech ecosystem. He helped grow multiple consultancies and software ventures, including the international expansion of ProjectManager.com which relocated its headquarters to Austin, Texas to break into the US market.
He later instigated the sale of the company he part-owned,to an Australian business which was absorbed by a multinational IT services firm a year later. The culture shift was stark.
“We had about 170 people in our New Zealand business, around 30 of those were in my team. The Aussie acquisition made sense strategically – both companies had similar growth ambitions and cultures. But when our still forming company was absorbed by the multinational, these were so different it dampened the fire of growth.
That experience sharpened his belief that structure and culture can either fuel or stifle a company’s momentum. ThinkGo is his response: a system designed to help small teams stay nimble while building toward scale.
Advice for Founders: Focus, Fit, and Feedback
Over two decades working alongside founders and executive teams, Deen has seen the same patterns play out again and again.
Clarity, he says, is the most underrated advantage. “Start with product-market fit, then move to go-to-market fit,” he says. “That progression is where the real traction happens.”
For early-stage software startups, it’s not the lack of ideas that derails growth, it’s confusion. Deen’s top advice? Simplify. Focus. And stay in constant dialogue with your customers.
“Especially in software. Your early adopters are giving you the clearest signals. You’ve got to build with them, listen to them, and iterate fast.”
He also cautions against over-engineering their approach too soon. Many of the strategy tools, while valuable, are often too complex to implement in the heat of startup life. That’s one reason he built ThinkGo. To offer something practical, not just theoretical.
And finally, he reminds founders to be ready to shift gear. The tools that help you grow from zero to $1 million don’t always take you from $1 million to $30 million.
“When you feel the speed wobbles in your tools, replace them,” he says. But up to that point, my goal is to help founders get there with more confidence and less chaos.
Beyond a Toolset
ThinkGo is more than a strategic playbook. It’s a culmination of Deen’s global experience across startups, consulting, systems thinking, and leadership, shaped into something founders can actually use.
As New Zealand’s startup ecosystem continues to mature, ventures like ThinkGo could play a key role in turning bold ideas into real businesses.
Interview and feature by Richard Liew.
