Ran into a guy at a coffee shop in Tempe who said my whole business plan was built on a lie...

I was working on my pitch for a local service app, and this older guy at the next table leaned over. He saw my screen and just said, 'You're building a house on sand.' He told me his first company failed because he spent 8 months perfecting a product nobody wanted to pay for. He said the common advice to 'find a problem and solve it' misses the key part: you have to find a problem people will actually open their wallets to fix, right now. He asked me point blank if I had gotten five people to verbally commit $50 a month for my solution yet. I hadn't... I was still building it. That five-minute chat stuck with me more than any book or podcast. It flipped my whole approach from building first to selling first. How do you figure out what someone will really pay for before you've built anything?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse_cooper1d ago

That guy's advice is gold, but the number he gave you is the scary part. Getting five people to verbally commit is a start, but a verbal "yes" over coffee is cheap. The real test is getting them to actually pull out a credit card for a pre-order, even for a beta version. I learned that the hard way. Had ten friends say they'd pay for a tool to organize their team snacks. Built a simple version, sent the payment link... zero takers. The problem was real, but paying to fix it wasn't a priority. You have to move past the chat and into a real transaction, even if it's small.

oscarcraig1d ago

That's just how people work with anything that costs money. Talk is free, but a real price tag makes them decide what they actually value. You see it with gym memberships and meal kits too.