Build for the Sake of Building
The “Research” Trap 🪤
Last week, the partners at South Park Commons (SPC) published a blog post sharing their take on the worldbuilder approach to generating and validating venture-scale startup ideas. As a current member of the SPC community, it resonated with me in general, but a specific passage from the post particularly struck a chord.
Beware the “research” trap
It is tempting early on to overindulge in “research” (we use quotation marks here to distinguish how founders typically use the term from how an actual research scientist would understand it). Research is dangerous because it feels more productive than it is. Reading up on the competitive landscape, market dynamics, or new technical advances can provide useful context, but is not the actual work. Those are all pieces of the existing world, not the beginnings of your new one. Prototyping is real work. Writing is real work. Running an experiment is real work. Customer discovery is real work.
As a founder building in the B2B domain, we’re often told not to build until we’ve heard a true pain point from a customer. It’s a waste of time. Instead, talk to customers. Interview domain experts. Connect with other founders building in the same space. This is the beginning of the cookie-cutter path to success to building a successful B2B startup.
Okay. Yes. Do all of those things.
I attended a talk last year where a graduated member of the community returned to speak with us, the newly minted Founder Fellows, about his experiences with pivoting and exploring new ideas. He shared a quick detail about how he and his team had set up a sophisticated Kubernetes deployment for their application. I asked him if he thought the time spent was worth it and if he regretted spending effort on it. He answered “no” and “yes” respectively, just like the book tells us to.
After reflecting more on the specific passage and assessing my time as a founder over the last year, I feel compelled to share some of my thoughts about building and real work. I’m doubling down on the point. For some, this message will be liberating. For others, this message will be met with some level of resistance and that’s okay. We all have thoughts and opinions and mine is just one of many.
Builders build, period.
The Builder’s Mindset 🏗️
The mindset of a builder is different from that of others. Builders create things. Things that you can see, touch, read, or hear.
Builders create artifacts. The partners at SPC define an artifact as something that “pulls forward some small part of a future world that currently exists only in your head and lets other people interact with it.” Artifacts aren’t necessarily tangible. Sometimes they evoke debate, draw pushback, and reveal desires and preferences. Again, an artifact doesn’t exist in your head. It exists in others’.
To builders, creating is not just a means to an end, but a skill that is honed. It’s a muscle that must be exercised regularly. Otherwise, the risk of atrophy is real.
Builders create something from nothing without any expectation of compensation or reward. Builders are motivated by the act of creation itself because the skills gained along the way compound in ways that cannot be measured. To a builder, the product of “0 x 10” does not equal 0. Rather, “0 x 10” equals 0.001. After building, failing, salvaging, and then rebuilding again, the product of their efforts begins to compound exponentially.
- 0 x 10 = 0.001
- 0.001 x 10 = 0.01
- 0.01 x 10 = 0.1
- 0.1 x 10 = 1
- 1 x 10 = 10
- 10 x 10 = 100
In the beginning, builders might be slower to work through the peaks and valleys of creation. But over time, as muscles grow stronger, the journey becomes much quicker to navigate.
The Builder’s Trap ⚠️
Building is fun and it’s easy to get caught in what the partners describe as the builder’s trap.
Don’t confuse coding with validation. Coding produces the structure of an experiment; people interacting with what you built produces the actual signal.
Say you put together an MVP and have a handful of users who like it. Have you validated the idea? Should you now have high conviction and dash off to fundraise? No! Here again is the builder’s trap.
Building without validation may give a false sense of progress. However, from a builder’s perspective, this point is missed. An individual who is both a founder and a builder must wear both hats and navigate both worlds carefully. If one consumes the other, then progress is simply just a pipedream.
What to Build? 🤔
It’s hard figuring out what to build. It may seem like the starting point to creation is invisible or far away, but I’ll share some of the ways I’ve thought about what to build and how to begin.
Post your ideas on Twitter, write a blog post, or solicit feedback for a memo.
Posting on Twitter (now called X) is not always a mindless act of internet rage. It can also be a harmless way to build confidence in yourself and conviction in an idea, unique or not.
Expand on the idea. Rewrite your technical notes in prose for others to comment or opine on. The act of writing builds critical thinking skills. It forces you to slow your train of thought and express yourself in a way that even you need to understand. Memos are also great. They constrain your focus but still allow for a wide range of creativity.
Write about your work. Write about your life. Write about anything that comes to mind.
Develop small programs or scripts, learn new technologies, or contribute to an open-source project.
If you’re technical, test out your small ideas. Write code. Write tests! Build a proof-of-concept or side project even if it’s half-baked with no backend. When appropriate, search for opportunities to use new technology. Tinkering with new tools helps build mental models for how new tools fit in with old ones. You may find that the one you discovered last month is now being showcased in a demo to your latest customer.
Contributing to open-source may seem like a daunting task, but there is plenty of work to go around. Find a community you’re passionate about or dare to open your own work.
Design landing pages, visuals, and interactive diagrams.
Designing visuals can be one of the most enjoyable things to do out of all the ways to create. Explore your inner artist. Build a sharp eye for good design, colors, and aesthetics. Shapes and lines also matter. Most people believe they’re naturally bad at design. I’m definitely in that boat too. However, I know what I like when I see it. If you see a good design, copy it. Perpetuate it. Over time, start to layer in small threads of your own style.
Create surveys, give talks, and foster relationships.
Get feedback on your ideas and opinions. Pressure test them with hard data from surveys. Then publish the results and promote your findings more broadly. Meet with others and exchange points of view. Speak at events, but also learn to listen. This is all the real work that will build the foundation of your future supporters and champions.
These are some examples from my experiences as a founder and engineer. Others will find different ways of starting and building. Along the way, they’ll discover what building means for them. But discovery cannot begin without starting small.
The Value of Building 💎
You can do all of those things above and you still may not land any design partnerships or business deals. But at least you have your muscles. If you’re consistent, you may find that other opportunities will start to seek you out.
Boosted articles, cutting-edge open-source projects, speaking gigs, and job opportunities could very well sneak up behind you. Occasionally, you may even get slapped with a DMCA takedown notice. If that happens, brush it off and just keep building.
In this new world of generative AI, where machines outwrite, outpower, and outbuild us humans, we should reflect on what’s left for us to do. I’d argue that building is all we have left. It’s what we’ve always done and it’s what we’ll always do. It’s what we’re best at.
So build for the sake of building. Go ahead. Write even if no one’s reading. Build programs with zero users. Talk and Tweet into the void. Waste your time. And then see what happens.
