Comment by salesthrowaway3
5 hours ago
My flippant answer is ask Bill Gates about that. It seemed to work out.
But in reality, as long as you're somewhat honest in the sales process, it'll still work out better to talk to potential customers as early as possible. Maybe the dogma has changed, but doesn't YC say to talk to your early users/customers as early as possible, and if you dont have anyone like that to talk to, how are you even building this thing you have no connection to?
There's no other leading metric that will tell you (directionally) whether you are doing a good job. Did they buy it? Did the conversion get made? Is it easier or harder to sell based on what you made/how you made it?
Yes, you can have whales that fuck you up, or bad feedback, or whatever, but at the end of the day a lot more folks end up siloing worrying about initial impressions, run out of money, build something nobody cares about anyway, and then they get to START at "let's go build what people actually will buy"