Are You Building Your Startup Backwards?

It’s a problem that plagues nearly every entrepreneur, and most never even know it

They spent months or years and tons of money developing their products, then they launched expecting tons of users to organically appear and start using them. But that’s never what happens. Instead, nobody uses their products, and the entrepreneurs can’t figure out what’s gone wrong.

While building the product is the logical first step from the perspective of entrepreneurs, when we put ourselves in the shoes of our users, it makes less sense. Users don’t care about our products. From their perspectives, they’re most concerned with solving their problems.

Savvy entrepreneurs decouple problems and solutions. This gives them the flexibility to research, understand, and prove a problem exists. Next, once they fully understand the problem without committing themselves to a solution, they’re free to explore any number of potential solutions until they find the best one.