The market wasn't there but I disagree that that means he should have started with little or no product. I forget who said it, but the best advice I've heard f

The market wasn't there but I disagree that that means he should have started with little or no product. I forget who said it, but the best advice I've heard from a V.C. is that one of the biggest mistakes they see is founders going overboard trying to avoid making the mistakes their last startup made. That said, I had an experience at a startup that did what the author now considers "the right way." We went out and sold before we had a product built. We figured out the pitch that the customers wanted to hear and had all of our best leads ready to go. But then it took more like a 12 to 18 months to build the thing, not the 3 to 6 we were promising. Unless you've built something exactly like the current product before, there are always technical problems you don't anticipate, and they always get solved the same way: add more engineering time. Your earliest/best sales leads are a precious resource. Do not look like a dumbass in front of them. The second batch is not as easy to find as the first or they would have been in the first batch.