What I Learned from Failing my Startup #6: Building is BullS**t Because Dan Robinson and I are both software engineers, we decided to immediately start building a product solution for our customers. We coded for hours and days without addressing the customer on what types of features they wanted. This turned into an ultimate disaster after months and months of trial and error building, what we thought, was a good solution for our clients. Ultimately, we build a bunch of crap that nobody wanted. We thought we were getting enough feedback but it was all noise because those customers weren't actually using our software. Here's the step by step process we have done for our next venture and it's worked tremendously so far: 1. Put a cap on your early customer size (no more than 5) 2. Create an agreement to meet with them regularly for continuous feedback 3. Don't build anything unless asked, and paid for by the customer. Good luck out there founders!
Agree with this (overbuilt in previous startup). There is some advantage in "building a bet" though. Take your bet (hypothesis), build a v1 in < 10 days, and validate usefulness. Even without payment. There is a lot of power in giving someone something they can use, but the trap is that it's really easy to just keep building and not validating.
Working with dozens of founders over the years, I've seen this exact scenario play out many times. The #buildtrap is real.
Stop inconsistent sales performance and burnout.
1wCheck out the zig zag principle. It talks about it this exact concept. I think you’ll really like the book.