Braden Kemp
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

Don’t build sh!t that nobody wants

Seriously, quit it.

Startups are complicated. And difficult to get right. Like, really difficult.

And that’s if you actually manage to solve a problem for real customers, and build a product that they will buy.

The reality is that most startups will never reach that stage, the majority die before even acquiring a single customer and that is 100% preventable.

But how?

Don’t start a company before you get a customer.

Imagine this:

There’s a huge river running through the middle of a city, and no bridge to cross from one side to the other. Each side has lots of work, grocery stores, malls, bars (entrepreneurs need to drink somewhere), hospitals, schools…you get the picture. People on the West side of the river are happy, as are people on the East side.

There are about 100 people that live on one side and work on the over, but they all have boats.

Enter the ambitious entrepreneur — “I will build a bridge! These people must be dying to visit each other’s cities!”

Ambitious entrepreneur raises $10M to build his bridge, but it only get’s half way so he manages to fool the government into giving him an additional $10M to complete construction.

One glorious day, the bridge opens! On that day, no one uses the bridge. In fact, for ten straight days no one uses the bridge.

Ambitious entrepreneur assumes that he didn’t market the bridge right, and returns to his VC who, seeing the beautiful bridge, gives him another $5M for bridge marketing.

Two months later, after a triumphant marketing campaign there was one guy using the bridge. Turns out his boat broke down, and he needed a short term solution.

Ambitious entrepreneur shuts down his bridge, and blames everything except his strategy for the failure.

What went wrong?

There was no need for a bridge. Actually, there was only 100 people who were even in the potential market for a bridge, but they already had a cheaper/better solution.

The entrepreneur missed this because he made an assumption — people wanted to travel by bridge between the two cities. Assumptions are good, and we need them, but ONLY if they are going to be thoroughly tested before spending money/time to act on them.

Instead of building a $10M bridge, ask people in they market if they want a bridge.

If you found this interesting click the 💚 to help other readers find it. Lots of other startup thoughts here: https://medium.com/@braden_kemp

Braden Kemp

Written by

Startup Fanatic. Director, Operations @ NPS App. Past Director, Client Services @ Spark Innovation Centre. Helped create Thrive Accelerator.

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