Build Your Product, Then Your Business

Do we not have exactly the opposite problem within this community?<p>We know coding so we spend our time hacking away in dark rooms on product stuff such as frameworks, features, deployments, websites etc.<p>We leave considerations about marketing, distribution, customer research till later, and end up building something that we have no way to effectively market.<p>The order should probably be to develop the business model, then develop the product, and only add this kind of administravia in as absolutely necessary.

In the past, no one ever seemed interested in the ideas I'd come up with. I gave up on finding someone to pair up with from the start and spent most of my free time working on a prototype for <a href="http://www.socialocale.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.socialocale.com</a> . I posted about it in a FB status and the next day a coworker came in and said "let's make this happen!" We've been working on just that ever since.<p>It really helps persuade people that your idea is worth it when they see that you were driven enough to spend your free time to bring it into existence. It actually probably tells them that 'you' are worth their time moreso than your current idea.

What if formally incorporating your business is a prerequisite for getting real user feedback (i.e. feedback that's not from friends and family)?<p>Like accepting credit card payments to a merchant bank account from real customers, or setting up an iOS developer account for a premium app to accept payments from Apple?<p>One of the pieces of advice YC gives to startups struggling to find direction is to "charge users for something". Surely you can't do this unless you're properly setup to accept payments. I suppose you could accept payments into a personal bank account and incorporate later, but most tax authorities would frown heavily on that.

How about this?<p>Build an experiment, then your product.

He has it right about many companies who are more interested in building a organization rather than build a company. I've seen it many times. I think it is tied to economic strength. When the economy is strong, you see more "culture based" companies who just want to hire their buddies and go through the motions. When the economy is strong, you see more companies putting effort into building a product and really trying to go after a market. Right now we're in a market slump, so most startups you come across are mainly looking to hire for cultural fit.

I disagree. Just as many startups fail because they don't have an actual business to be the foundation for their product. It's important to have someone on your team (founder, advisor, investor, or whoever) thinking about how to build a business, as well as someone thinking about the product. If you do, then you're more likely to succeed than if you're just focused on product. IMO.

Or you pick a market with a lot of customers and competition and build a product knowing that there is demand...

Wow, what a transparent strawman. Every 'how to do a startup' guide stresses that getting your product in front of users is the key priority of every new company.<p>Nothing I've ever read has ever advocated getting an NDA or figuring out pricing strategy before you have interested users.

Yes and no: some of that 'busywork' is pretty important if there's more than one founder and you don't want to deal with a major shitstorm when someone bows out and still wants a share, or some such similar situation.

This is exactly backwards. But I think the author was trying to say something else and just messed up the title.

Should be taken with a grain of salt since the author is in the business of building web/mobile apps (products).