"Build first, find a market later" mindset will kill your business

Marketing people have no soul.
Marketing should not define your product. While it’s true that you need validation early on and build with users’ needs in mind - nothing is more annoying than marketing people talking about “great” stuff coming up “soon”. Sometimes it’s better to make your own mistakes and learn from them than to believe blindly some “experts”. You need sometimes to do something regardless of what other people might say because you believe in something and want to change a status quo. Also talking to other (wrong) people too early might discourage you from building a great visionary product. It’s never a bad idea to build an MVP first before you tell others how great your product is.

In my experience, it depends.

• Spending a year building something nobody wants is for sure a bad idea.
• Spending a weekend building a prototype can help to have the right conversations.

Of course, it also depends on how difficult it is to get to MVP.

I've done both and I don't regret it.

The key as you said is "marketing" begins on day 0. Of course it depends how you define marketing. Telling people what you're working on regularly, getting a feel for how people respond. Finding the right channels to your customers. These are all very important.

But at some point you just might not be able to find the market you're looking for. You need to know when to stop, pivot or go in a completely different direction.

My current project, Summarise YouTube was a weekend prototype and so far it's meeting all my expectations. Conversations are starting to happen. I don't think I'd be able to have them without the prototype.

@kronop - I've always struggled with the idea "market first, build later". Could you help me understand this a bit in more detail? Here's how I think about it -

Let's say I'm building an MVP in a proven market. I know my product isn't incredibly different. But I just want a share of the market. In this case; how should I go about marketing my product? Do I need to revalidate the market? I know people are willing to pay for the solution. My differentiator could be - better UI/UX, better pricing, great support etc.

I'd rather build the minimum lovable product and then enter the market to see if there are buyers.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Great post and I couldn’t agree more. The LEAN canvas is a great help to get your concept ready, then aim to find a profitable business model as quickly as you can through an MVP and user feedback.

I would go as far as saying, Don’t Build to Build, Build to Solve a Problem.

When you solve a problem where the 3 lenses of innovation overlap (Viability, Feasibility, Desirability), success is more likely.

Talk to 15 people from your target audience segment to validate that they have this problem (don't ask them if they will buy your product; focus on the problem and their experience with current solutions)
---- it is really important

I used to play Jupiter Hell, but lately my free time for video games is getting less and less. I don't know, maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm trying to start my own business now and I'm constantly and constantly ordering best tennessee llc services since I don't understand anything about it yet. Or maybe I'm just not ready to spend my free time yet. But I hope that soon I can get back to video games and spend more time doing this wonderful thing.

This is quite hard-hitting, We made the tough call to discontinue our side project not long ago, a venture that consumed numerous weekends and personal resources. While we were actively presenting our product, we maintained secrecy around it. Our inclination to evade the spotlight and bypass marketing persisted. It's not that the issues didn't exist; it's just that we held onto the aspiration of a grand launch or a flood of eager sign-ups. Unfortunately, reality fell short of those expectations, leading to feelings of disappointment and a gradual loss of motivation as we progressed.

This is awesome. I love how you outlined these points: creating a marketing funnel first, getting early bird sign ups and then creating a waitlist after it is over. These are some of the things I had to learn when starting a new product page

This is so true - as everyone else - learnt these the hard way. Thanks for writing the piece.

Learnt not just some of these... all of it, the hard way. I'm glad to see it articulated like this.

Well you have to build something first to show someone. The idea must jump from your head and come out to the real world. Goal of it is relative. It's the prototype, the MVP or whatever you want to call it. You could make a project that does not need sales. So if you want to build something just build it. Don't put a price tag on it. Money is just one of many goals. :)

Pedro

Amazing insight

Damn right, marketing is so important.

Totally agree. This is exactly one of my takeaways from the past many years of building products. Marketing is as important as building the product itself. I think it's more like building to solve problems rather than building to sell. Sometimes if you only focus on selling your vision is short-sighted. Solve an immediate problem in the short term and focus on a bigger vision in the long term.

"Marketing starts on day 0" is my big takeaway. I'd add "and it never ends until you exit." There's a lot of discussion of whether to market or build first. But why not focus on solving the problem right away, in whatever capacity you can?

This'll initially be clarifying it online so more people understand it. Then you can ship a lightweight solution like a newsletter or Notion template, like you suggested. Then perhaps a service. Then a no-code solution. Then, finally, a MVP.

This way, you can market and build simultaneously while you make your way to a full-fledged product. The whole time you'll expose yourself to the reality of whether you're solving the problem or not.

The "Build first, find a market later" mindset can indeed be detrimental to a business. It's crucial to understand and address the needs of your target audience before investing heavily in product development. Building a product without a clear market in mind can lead to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and a lack of product-market fit. Successful businesses prioritize market research and validation, ensuring that their offerings align with customer demands. In today's competitive landscape, understanding your market from the outset is essential for sustainable growth and long-term success.

Starting with a specific problem in mind is the core skill for all people here.
This is not marketing per se. It is something much harder.

Problem design, framing, isolating, spotting, and understanding. The market is a system. The problem is a messy or missing code within that system.

If you do it right you do not need to shmooze with potential customers early on. You are supposed to work under the hood whereas their perception is often superficial.

Finding and good problem and sticking to it is my ideal.
You can throw all you have at it and hopefully one of the solutions and angles will work.

some features have been validated, just build it?

Couldn't agree more!
before: learn learn learn learn learn learn learn work
now: learn work learn work learn work learn work learn work

Btw, is it common for founders here to launch their landing page w/ waiting list on Product hunt?

What ever you are doing the most important thing is to get to product market fit as fast as possible. Only product market fit can make money, a sustainable flow of money because people need your product.

So, whatever you do that can achieve product market fit fast is the best option. If you are so good at building and can build within days and confirm that the market for your product exists, then building can help your customer understand what you are doing.

Else most of the time going around checking the existence of demand in the market is better. Most of the time building takes more time than doing research so essentially figuring out product market fit will take longer.

Thats all. No rules, no steps, no tips or tricks.

Have product that people want aka product market fit = good product.

Whatever your strategy is as long as it help to reach or figure out product market fit faster, it is the best strategy.

If you guys want to understand more about product market fit checkout this blog post: Key to Business Success: Finding Product-Market Fit

I think it's wrong to discard "build, then market" completely if you have a lot of runway and are starting a side-hustle alongside your job. If your 3-month project doesn't take off immediately, who cares? Just go back to a job and market it until it takes off. It's very hard to market a product that doesn't exist yet esp. if you don't know how long it will take to build. The only valid point is to verify that a market exists if you embark on larger multi-year projects. For smaller ones I would just build it, if it fails, chalk it up as "work experience" and get a higher paid job later on.

I wouldn't write off the "build for yourself" trap so quickly. If you're the target customer, you'll also have the best mental model for what the solution should look like. Parker Conrad at Rippling talks about this – he admits that he's not the best PM, so to better understand the needs of the end user, he's the only full admin at Rippling (obviously doing the job of admin using Rippling). He becomes to target customer so he can prioritize more effectively. Plenty of other companies started out using this approach.

However, I do think you ultimately emphasize the right thing – which is that if you're building for yourself, it's very easy to develop some harmful biases. While there can be advantages to starting up by building for yourself (you know the problem space intimately), you need to go out and find design partners early and continuously iterate and validate.

It's also going to be very difficult if you don't have that initial network of peers/potential customers to lean on. You have to go out and find them. Easier said than done.

Quick questions, what channels do you use?

Do you cold email with Apollo, join reddit communites, attend conferences,etc?

It's been difficult to get people to talk to.

A struggle I am having is quickly finding people in my target audience to speak with. Does anyone have any hacks for this?

As simple as that.

Kinda agree.

What if I really want to walk through the whole launch journey (setting up monitoring, newsletter subscription, domain, etc.), just for the sake of learning?

I've never done that. Used to stop at the coding phase.

Absolutely on point, Dan! Your insight here is a much-needed reality check for all aspiring entrepreneurs. The "build first, find a market later" mindset might seem tempting, but it's a one-way ticket to disappointment. Your breakdown of the three major pitfalls is spot on. It's easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of coding, but in the end, it's all about solving problems for your audience. Without understanding their needs and struggles, you're just floating in the void.

made my shares of mistakes on this and only taking niches and categorizing customer groups first before even a single line of PRD

The best approach is to always develop an MVP with minimum resources required, and then test the reception on real users. If you see potential, develop your MVP into something more robust.

It is really helpful for new owners...

I think it is 50/50. The correct way is always to build the MVP first, and then test it.

Remember, understanding your target audience's needs and validating your product early on are key. By following your suggested marketing tasks, entrepreneurs can increase their chances of success and avoid wasting time on non-viable ideas. Grateful for these actionable steps! 🚀

I like it

good idea i like it .lol

"If you build a product around your vision and not customers' needs" This sentence is very thoughtproving.

That's why speed is very important in business especially if you are bootstrapping or solopreneur. Even thought you have do all the validation there is a chance that it cannot be scale or other weird issue that you miss during validation.

So what you need to do is quickly validate and quickly built and test it out. And then if not working well move to next.

If you guys remember pieter levels and many others did similar stuff. Build fast break fast and move on. Else you will stuck with unworking startup.

If you are thinking what if it takes time to pickup ?

Well if during you launch nobody cares then it tells something about the product.

Here some reading regrading how to build mvp fast. When Building MVP, Speed is the Focus

Remember failure will comes and the only way to achieve success is to go through the failures quickly

How do people usually find customers and people to validate their ideas? This is the hard part for me. Thanks

This is helpful! Thank you.

Best Wishes From Inat TV APK Ios

Thanks for this article, very insightful. I needed to read something like this.

Is hard to be absolute in this matter. Eventual success reduces (in hindsight) the weight of false or painful starts).

For me the maker/sales dilemma gets resolved with two ideas:

1. Rather than "being good at business”… an entrepreneur task is to discover a good business (than anyone can run). Being good at business is really about understanding this.

2. You don’t want to miss, but you don’t want to stay away from opportunities to miss since they are the same opportunities to hit.

Just like life, starting a business can only be experienced.

Dealing with this right now. The if you build it, they will come approach. Thankfully it's not too expensive to keep my site running so I'm focusing on audience building now

Focus on Problem Solving!

I totally agree with your points. "Solving the Problem" It is main for all products.

I couldn't agree more.

Dan, Firstly, thank you for laying this out. I definitely need to hear this post. I've been grappling with some doubts about calmmind.ai. Truthfully, I'm not completely sure about my target audience and whether they'd buy into my app. Given everything you've mentioned, should I consider a pivot? Also, I value your perspective - what's your honest take on the core idea behind my app? Do you think it stands a chance?

Thanks for your valuable input Dan!

If I plan to build/sell a data list on a monthly subscription basis to you recommend creating an early bird deal that gives the first 10 customers a lifetime heavy discounted monthly subscription rate or rather a heavily discounted one-time 6 month/annual pass? Much love

The one thing I find exciting is, that if your product is like from 2056 then it's going to break the moon fr...