How my startup got its first 10 paying customers
The journey to getting our first 10 paying customers taught me a great deal about business and startups, and none of it was what I expected.
Let’s start at the beginning. After the big bang and the ensuing quark soup Eric Ries invented the modern startup. Somewhere in there, clocks and proper time-keeping was also invented, but who has time for that? Shortly thereafter (and for reasons unknown), my co-founders and I decided we’d quit our high-paying jobs in tech to do a startup. We started Machine Box because we saw a gap in the machine learning as a service market. We were frustrated with the current state of machine learning so we decided to do something about it. As it turns out, others were just as frustrated so it was a good problem to solve.
Step 1 — solve a problem
The first thing you need to do is validate your idea, and try and do so with someone who would pay for your solution. Don’t just call up your mom and ask her if she’d use a new social network about cats (she’ll probably say yes). That, my friends, is called confirmation bias. What I learned is that people are very willing to give you feedback on your idea, so…
