Most technical solutions are trivial compared to how you get the product into peoples hands

This is a riff off of a great blog post I read yesterday: What I’d tell myself about startups if I could go back 5 years.

The title is #24 on the list.

As a technically minded person I can only agree with this. I keep hearing non-technical people saying stuff like “if only I could tell 5 programmers about my idea, I’d win” or “I need investors so I can hire someone to build it for me”.

You have to come to terms with the fact that you can’t make it by getting someone to build your idea. A first version of your idea is probably so trivial to build that once it’s done your lack of focus on people have created a new problem for you: What you had someone else build for you is wrong! No one wants it!

Your lack of focus on people could be because you’re not invested in the audience you set out to create a product for — you might not even know them. Which brings up another point from the blog post:

If you don’t have first hand experience of an industry, you’re probably wrong about how it works, what problems they have and so how they should be solved. Talk to people

Hiding is no good. Hiding costs you valuable time that could help you learn. And learning is the entire point. Don’t seek confirmation, although it is very difficult not to look for approval of your idea, you should try to learn new things and ultimately break your idea to move you towards a product that is actually needed. The idea can be very dangerous.