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I wonder if the guys at Google, Ebay, Skype, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook had 10 people that were willing to purchase their software or service before th

I wonder if the guys at Google, Ebay, Skype, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook had 10 people that were willing to purchase their software or service before they started? Did Apple have 10 people lined up to purchase their first product? Were they able to pre-sell the Mac? I understand what the author is getting at, and it may work for a certain class of startups, but I don't think that it works 's terribly realistic to apply that to all startups. Yes, talking to people about what they want or would be willing to pay for is a good idea, but there's a lot of products that people just aren't going to understand until they see other people using it. The vast majority of successful startups end up building a completely different product than the one they set out to build. I'd much rather build a minimal product, put it in front of people and then iterate the product until you have something that people want and use.

raganwald 16y ago
Actually, Apple did have orders for units they later built. Furthermore, as members of the Homebrew club they were very much in touch with what features their market wanted to buy and what they were willing to pay.
jonknee 16y ago
Besides Apple, you mentioned no companies that actually sell products so this advice isn't applicable. Both Apple and Microsoft famously had orders before product, but that's really common in product oriented businesses. Dell made a whole company around that philosophy.
- webwright 16y ago
  I think that's his point. Selling software is only one kind of startup. Would be interesting to apply the "get outside the building" thinking to: 1) Games - how to you verify that a game is "fun" before you build it? Cardboard cutouts and early play testing? 2) Marketplaces - You can verify that people hate eBay or VRBO, but what sort of early validation could you do to take them on? 3) User generated content - What could Yelp have done to validate the market? Those are just a few off the top of my head. Not saying that you can't "get outside the building"-- just that it might take a different type of thinking...
kenjackson 16y ago
This is a very fair point. Take Google for example, people may not remember, but they actually were trying to sell a product when they started. They were trying to sell enterprise search. And generally people didn't want to buy it. But they had technology so compelling that business model fell into their lap. Maybe they were lucky, but I would say that if you have a technology that no one wants to buy, but everyone wants to use... stick with it. There's something to it.

raganwald 16y ago

Actually, Apple did have orders for units they later built. Furthermore, as members of the Homebrew club they were very much in touch with what features their market wanted to buy and what they were willing to pay.

jonknee 16y ago

Besides Apple, you mentioned no companies that actually sell products so this advice isn't applicable. Both Apple and Microsoft famously had orders before product, but that's really common in product oriented businesses. Dell made a whole company around that philosophy.

webwright 16y ago
I think that's his point. Selling software is only one kind of startup. Would be interesting to apply the "get outside the building" thinking to: 1) Games - how to you verify that a game is "fun" before you build it? Cardboard cutouts and early play testing? 2) Marketplaces - You can verify that people hate eBay or VRBO, but what sort of early validation could you do to take them on? 3) User generated content - What could Yelp have done to validate the market? Those are just a few off the top of my head. Not saying that you can't "get outside the building"-- just that it might take a different type of thinking...

kenjackson 16y ago

This is a very fair point. Take Google for example, people may not remember, but they actually were trying to sell a product when they started. They were trying to sell enterprise search. And generally people didn't want to buy it. But they had technology so compelling that business model fell into their lap. Maybe they were lucky, but I would say that if you have a technology that no one wants to buy, but everyone wants to use... stick with it. There's something to it.