My client ran out of money last week. He fired his team; all that’s left is him prospecting. Says it’s the best thing that could have happened.
$200k spent since June building a product he can’t sell ($500k total this year).
Last night he said, “Slack is so quiet; I can focus again.”
He said he’d been on a treadmill where a prospect would mention an idea and he’d think, “we can build that,” and he’d put his team on it, they’d build it and the prospect still wouldn’t convert. This happened over and over and over again.
He said all the activity felt like progress, but it allowed him to ignore the fundamental fact that he didn’t understand his market.
Here’s what sucks:
I’ve known since two months into our engagement that he was pissing money away. And I’ve learned over the last ten year that this is a third rail.
I asked him last night, “is there anything I could have possibly said in the last six months that would have caused you to stop building and exclusively go back to discovery and early sales?”
He paused for a second and gave me an honest answer: Absolutely not. He needed to hit a wall.
This is the problem with building too early.
Once you start, it’s almost impossible to stop.
Most startups die because they start building before they understand their market’s need, let alone the solution.
Building software, even software nobody wants, feels like progress.
Returning to discovery feels like going backwards, even though it is the only progress that matters.
Don’t build until you absolutely have to. You’d be surprised how long that can be.