I am wondering if anyone here bootstrapping a startup has ever not "gotten out of the building" and just went ahead and build stuff and actually succeeded in gaining traction.<p>Paul Graham said to look for a pain point, build a quick prototype, and use said prototype as a pretext to engage potential customers, from whom feedback would be obtained to reiterate the product until it becomes something that people want. That's what we did, but feedback has been slow to come (we have a B2B app for a niche market), and we have little idea on how to proceed without much feedback with which to move forward.<p>My question is, is it ever too late to do customer development, hopefully without pivoting too much? How do we know if we have built something that people want? Are there case studies about startups "evangelizing" a not-wanted product (e.g. due to its infancy, "too-early-for-its-time" syndrome) into a wanted product just by educating the market?
<i>feedback has been slow to come (we have a B2B app for a niche market)</i><p>What's your sales process been like? I assume you're not sitting back, waiting for customers to come to you.<p><i>How do we know if we have built something that people want?</i><p>Surely you know people in this niche, right? I mean, presumably you didn't just pick a niche at random. So, go to some of those people, and ask them to be beta testers on the software. Give them a free trial, and ask for feedback.<p>If you can't get people to use it for free, you're going to have trouble getting people to pay for it.<p>It's definitely possible to educate the market-- but to do so, you've got to refine your pitch. Ask yourself, "What is the pain point my product solves?" If you can't describe the pain point and your solution in a couple sentences, you aren't there, yet.