<story><title>Sales mistakes that software engineers make</title><url>https://www.pipelinedb.com/blog/three-sales-mistakes-software-engineers-make</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bambax</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Sales Mistake #1 - Building Before you Start Selling (...) If you’re wrong, you’ll save time and money by not building something people don’t want.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I fell into this trap often, so I know it well. The reason why we don&amp;#x27;t ask first is, we want to build &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt;. Anything. If we&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;wrong&amp;quot;, we won&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;save&amp;quot; time and money, we will delay the moment we start making, maybe indefinitely. What if we never find something people want?&lt;p&gt;The worst outcome is not to build something nobody wants -- it&amp;#x27;s not to build anything. We don&amp;#x27;t ask not because we forget about it, but because we&amp;#x27;re afraid of the answer.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;#x27;s irrational, and probably stupid (because, what&amp;#x27;s the point of building something nobody wants?) but the desire to build is the driving force, and finding an audience first, is perceived as an impediment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Fergi</author><text>(Jeff from PipelineDB &amp;amp; post author here)&lt;p&gt;Thanks for this comment. I think you articulated the thought process that this post aims to speak to beautifully. Builders do want to build, and finding an audience first and doing the type of tedious customer development work described in this post IS an impediment to building, which is precisely the point I wanted to make.&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the goal of building a product is to ultimately generate revenue, having a temporary impediment between conceptualizing a product idea and building the product is a good thing. This impediment allows for the builder to pause and objectively scrutinize his own idea, using feedback from potential customers as data about the extent to which the product hypothesis is correct.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re right that stagnation is the worst outcome. And the inverse of stagnation is momentum, which will exist to the extent that people want what we&amp;#x27;re making for them, something that can be determined in advance of building simply by talking to potential users and customers.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll also add here that the process mentioned in this post in no way inhibits the type of creative and inspired thinking that developers use to envision game-changing products. It&amp;#x27;s quite the opposite - rigorous and merciless scrutiny of our own ideas is the distillation process that allows us to refine our ideas into their essence, then confidently build things with conviction, and be right.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sales mistakes that software engineers make</title><url>https://www.pipelinedb.com/blog/three-sales-mistakes-software-engineers-make</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bambax</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Sales Mistake #1 - Building Before you Start Selling (...) If you’re wrong, you’ll save time and money by not building something people don’t want.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I fell into this trap often, so I know it well. The reason why we don&amp;#x27;t ask first is, we want to build &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt;. Anything. If we&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;wrong&amp;quot;, we won&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;save&amp;quot; time and money, we will delay the moment we start making, maybe indefinitely. What if we never find something people want?&lt;p&gt;The worst outcome is not to build something nobody wants -- it&amp;#x27;s not to build anything. We don&amp;#x27;t ask not because we forget about it, but because we&amp;#x27;re afraid of the answer.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;#x27;s irrational, and probably stupid (because, what&amp;#x27;s the point of building something nobody wants?) but the desire to build is the driving force, and finding an audience first, is perceived as an impediment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jeremyjh</author><text>This is all very true and relevant, yet still its also true that we see lots of stories from founders regretting that they never established market fit before sinking years into development. This is probably the pattern for 90% of indie game developers, but it crops up in other contexts as well. Once they finally know they are at the end of that road to nowhere, they do have regrets, and they have had other ideas in the meantime that they &lt;i&gt;did not pursue&lt;/i&gt; because they were dedicated to the current project.&lt;p&gt;All this aside, I have a side-project, and I&amp;#x27;m not looking for any validation of it, just classic &amp;quot;build it and they will come&amp;quot; type thinking.</text></comment>