Hi there,

Today, I want to share a story from a couple of years ago that I think about often, and what I learnt from it that every new, especially first-time, founder needs to know.

Imagine spending $250,000 building a business and getting zero customers.

This isn't hypothetical. A founder came to me after doing exactly that.

She had built a complicated tech product. It was well-engineered. She had put real money, real time, and real conviction into it. By all accounts, she had done the work. But when it was time to find customers, nothing. Crickets.

She came to me for help finding customers. And that's when things got uncomfortable.

Before I tell you what I found, I want to address the thought that might already be forming in your head.

You can build quite a lot in a weekend for next to nothing now. So maybe this story feels like a relic. A cautionary tale from a more expensive era of building.

But the cost of building has never been the real risk. The real risk has always been building the wrong thing. Vibe coding just means you can make that mistake faster and cheaper. The $250,000 problem is now a $500 problem that still ends in zero customers.

And here's the thing nobody is talking about: if you can build it over a weekend, so can 1,000 other people. The market is about to be flooded with products nobody validated, and the graveyard of products with 0 customers is already getting crowded.

So, in this era of wildly easy and fast product development, what’s a new founder’s advantage? 👇

So what had gone wrong?

She wildly overestimated her ability to read minds. She did zero work to confirm anyone would actually pay for her solution. She had experience in the field so she built a product that she felt was the best solution - without ever confirming there was willingness to pay to even solve the problem. Just because something should and could work better, doesn’t mean there will be people lining up to pay for it.

Building a business is not a Field of Dreams situation. Just because you build it doesn't mean they will come.

This is again not an anomaly. Whether you are building something over the weekend or spending $250K on it, this step cannot be skipped if you are serious about making meaningful money i.e. you want to build a business, not just a product.

Before you do anything else, sit with this question: do you have any real world proof that people will pay for your solution? Not a compliment. Not a "this is such a good idea." Not a survey response. An actual human, ideally a stranger, who has committed money to have their problem solved.

If the answer is no, that is okay. That is your entire focus right now. Everything else can wait.

[If right now you are thinking, I don’t know what problem I solve, or for whom, that should now be your number priority to figure out. Skip to step 3.].

You do not need a finished product to start validating. Think about the problem you are solving and ask yourself: what is the most manual, scrappy version of this solution I could deliver to someone this week and charge for?

Maybe it is a consulting session. Maybe it is doing the thing manually that your product will eventually automate. Maybe it is a pre-sale with a promise to deliver. The format matters less than the act of making a real offer to a real person.

This is where most founders stall. They keep researching, refining, preparing. But the only thing that actually tells you if someone will pay is asking them to pay.

One conversation, when run correctly, will teach you more than months of building ever could. And in fact, conversations like this are what will inform your product roadmap so you don’t build something nobody wants. You know what’s wild? So many founders I work with end making massive pivots just from these early conversations.

This is so core to how I work with founders that I coined it Research-Sales Methodology, and it’s now one of the first things we tackle as part of the Happy Paying Customers™ System. I help founders develop a plan for how to run these types of conversations depending on their stage, and what to sell - when they are ready. Because until you have a replicable Happy Paying Customer, everything else is just noise.

Here’s to building businesses, not just products!

Rooting for you,
Sweta

If, and when, you are ready, here’s how I can help:

I work with new founders to help them validate their idea and de-risk their business using the Happy Paying Customers™ System that has been used by more than 110 founders. You can learn more and choose the path that’s right for you here.

p.s. you can now preview the System.