If you're building something with the goal of selling it, sell before you build. This applies in at least 99% of cases.<p>Just go to potential customers and tell them "hey, in [a few months/years], I'm going to launch a thing that can do this and that for you. Would you like one at prelaunch price?"<p>If customers don't like your initial pitch and don't buy, why would you give up? <i>Iterate on what you're selling</i>. You don't need to build to iterate.<p>Then you can build something people <i>want</i>.<p>I like to phrase that as "as a software consultant, I'm in the business of not writing code. The first rule of this business is to never write code until somebody definitely wants to use it".<p>Of course, if you're building it just for fun, iterate on the code all yu want before you sell it.
Same goes for:<p>- Putting up a landing page with an email collection form at the bottom without a <i>strong</i> value-add for the potential user<p>- General idea of MVPs (not saying MVPs don't work, I'm saying the way we're told MVPs have to be bereft of features and polish is bullshit), though this has mostly been replaced with Minimal Loveable Product.<p>- The idea that you have to be first/second to an idea to make money from it (I was 200th to my idea, it's profitable)<p>- The idea that you have to quit your job and "hustle hard" to make a product others will want (I did it in 2 hour chunks before work)
"Sell before you build" is the tech elite's "let them eat cake". It's literally impossible to do unless you have the right connections and raised funding from the right people.<p>Unless your startup received massive media exposure, nobody will part their money for a product which does not yet exist... You need exposure to massive numbers of people to get any measurable success... And without the right personal connections, it costs a prohibitive amount of money to get that kind of exposure. If you're a developer, it would be cheaper for you to build the thing and then try to grow linearly over the years than to pay the cash up front to achieve that kind of reach... What if your product doesn't measure up to expectations? This is a real risk if you got your customers through advertising (selling a dream) instead of winning them over slowly through a superior offering. The problem with selling a dream is that it's essentially impossible to make reality match the idealised image which you projected into the customer's mind... Even in the cases where it does seem to work out and customers make repeat purchases, the product may just be a superficial representation of what the customer actually needed and it could take them a few years to figure out that the product was itself just an extension of the dream, a shell of a solution... There are better alternatives out there.
The building spectrum covers from consulting on one end to crafting on the other end.<p>The first step is to know yourself. Which style are you? Which style you want to be?<p>If you are on the consulting end, talk to people, understand the problem, build a solution, and iterate on it. This is how software has been <i>preached</i> to be built for decades. Waterfall/agile/whatnot are all the same, assuming <i>idea</i> come from somewhere and keep iterating your solution.<p>If you are on the crafting end, you have an ideology to preach. Akin to art in any form, you are both the source of <i>idea</i> and executor. You broadcast your ideology and look for followers. Rich Hickey of clojure, Mike Bostock of D3.js and Bret Victor are on this camp in my opinion.<p>Note that you can hop between crafting and consulting/iterating. But iterating is like newton method, no amount of iterating will get you to answer if the initial guess is too off. So one has to have strong conviction to craft an initial solution with good enough quality before launching into iteration cycles. I've seen many "metric-minded" product people obsessed about iteration without having any conviction on what to build. Without the initial conviction, no amount of iteration can give you clojure, d3.js and co.
I don't remember the last time I signed up to a mailing list just to be notified when some random app goes live. Let alone pre-ordering.<p>I would do that if I already trust the organization, which implies it has already launched useful products in the past. For an unknown startup, the idea would have to be truly Earth-shaking for me to sign up.<p>In most cases, I'll just wait until I hear that the app is out, and then try it and consider purchasing.<p>To me, "sell before you build" is a no-go for upstarts with zero audience, whereas "market before you build", or maybe "market as you are building", creates the awareness you'll need to warm people up when you are ready to sell.
I disagree with this interpretation.<p>It is a question of versioning and packaging. Basically, v0 of a product is for testing the initial hypotheses that people are interested in buying at all. And it also serves as a tool for finding the initial "fans" that are excited by your product vision and will help you flesh out the product.<p>"Sell before you build" is just way to communicate this.<p>btw: The post is very short. Here it is:<p><i>> This is such bad advice.
It assumes that everyone will nail their product on the first go. Almost no-one does.<p>> If I went to customers and pitched Songbox to them with what was the initial version of it I had in my head - I would have gotten nothing. And if I'd given up on it at THAT point then I would have missed out on (a couple years later) having a business that's well into X thousand MRR and even more importantly, working with some amazing people and having truly exciting and unique experiences.<p>> There is no doubt that "sell before you build" will work for some people; but everything and anything will work for SOME people.<p>> For the general populace of makers it is crushingly bad advice.</i>
I suppose it's good advice depending on your target audience.<p>Generally, a lot of indie hacker types of entrepreneurs just like building cool things!<p>A bit more proactive on the communicative and sales side is not a bad thing, but I believe it's best to play to your individual strengths.
Same here with "just for the cost of a cup of coffee" as a coffee hater and I also think if I pay cost of one coffee here, there and elsewhere them in sum it's much more than cost of a cup.
Let me tell you that it's hard to work with softwares first...<p>Let me tell you that it's also hard to find skilled ppl in the context you wish to exploit.<p>Let me tell you I saw many clowns telling they are good with computing...<p>But unaware what a heap memory. Says a lot. :)