Sell it before you build it

There’s a comfortable lie in early building: “I’ll sell it once it’s ready.” The problem is that “ready” can take six months, and at the end you find out nobody wanted it.

Flip the order. Try to sell it first — before you build anything.

A pre-sale, a deposit, a paid waitlist, an invoice for a pilot. It feels premature. That’s the point. The moment someone hands over money for a promise, you’ve learned more than a hundred “that sounds great” conversations.

If people pay, you build with a customer already waiting. If they don’t, you just saved yourself those six months. Either way you win — which is the whole idea behind building with what you have.