If You Build It, Nobody Is Coming
You have the idea. You can see the product. So you build it. That reflex feels like progress, and it is the most expensive mistake a first-time founder makes. James Sinclair takes the famous line about building it and the crowd that comes, and turns it inside out. Today the barriers to building are almost gone. A clean product introduced into silence stays silent. So the work moves earlier. Before you write a line of code, you go find the line of buyers. Your proof is not a demo — it is people who already want the thing, who will hand you their objections and their wallets before you ship. They validate your assumptions. They tell you what is friction and what is fantasy. They become your first believers, recruited while the product is still a sketch. ...