Are You Building Your Startup Backwards?
It’s a problem that plagues nearly every entrepreneur, and most never even know it
An entrepreneur came to see me with a problem. She’d spent 12 months building a phone app to help diabetics track their daily exercise. But, six months after launching the app, she hardly had any users.
“I just don’t understand,” she huffed. “In all our tests, people liked it and thought it was really valuable. So why can’t we get anyone downloading the app? If people would just use it, I’m sure they’d love it.”
I’ve seen entrepreneurs facing the same problem more times than I can remember. They spent months or years and tons of money developing their products, then they launched expecting tons of users to organically appear and start using them. But that’s never what happens. Instead, nobody uses their products, and the entrepreneurs can’t figure out what’s gone wrong.
“I can tell you what’s happened,” I said as I shook my head and sighed, “but you’re not going to like the answer.”
“Please tell me,” she replied. “Anything is better than this.”
“It’s a common problem,” I told her. “You’ve built your startup backwards.”
