The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch

by Dan Norris

Without question, the biggest mistake people make is obsessing over their idea and not focusing enough on finding people willing to pay for their product.

That lesson is: “You don’t learn until you launch.”

The popular stories you hear about startup validation go something like this: 1. I created a website with a brief video. 2. It went viral. 3. I bought a yacht.

A Founder’s Ability to Get Customers (To Hustle) Matters - A great idea, executed well, will fail without customers.

I only had one developer, which meant someone else had to be online the other 16 hours in the day. That was me. I found a free mobile app that integrated with the Olark software and I had my phone on live every night. Anyone who jumped on chat in those early days was waking me up, but they didn’t know it! Again, short-term pain was not a problem.

he continued to learn from paying customers, focusing on what they wanted (and ignoring the rest). After nine months he was earning $18,800 MRR.

Make sure you are sending out a lot of high quality, relevant information. Don’t try to sell to everyone on the list.

Save your excitement until you land people you don’t know as customers.

The only thing that will kill a recurring business is that more customers leave than sign up. It’s hard to get new customers, but it’s easy for them to leave.