> They emphasized talking with customers/users more than anything else. The problem was we didn't really know any of our potential customers or users (grade school teachers/public schools). So we had to essentially cold call schools, find teachers/admins emails online, and fish around our personal network for intros.
What gets ignored in the now-popular "talk to potential customers" mantra is that simply talking to potential customers is rarely enough. It's a very valuable tactic when applied to a good strategy; it's not a strategy in and of itself.
Do you truly know who your potential customers are and what pains them the most? Do you know how much money they have, how they spend it and when they spend it? Have you ever worked in their industry? If you don't have domain knowledge, if not expertise, talking to potential customers can be just as much a waste of time as premature coding in my opinion.
As an example, I once worked on a consulting engagement for a company that sells hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth of product into the K-12 market. While there are certainly some viable edtech startups, based on what I learned working with this company, I would never consider trying to build an edtech business that has to sell at the school or classroom level.
Bottom line: the famous Peter Lynch principle, "invest in what you know", should be applied to entrepreneurship.
What gets ignored in the now-popular "talk to potential customers" mantra is that simply talking to potential customers is rarely enough. It's a very valuable tactic when applied to a good strategy; it's not a strategy in and of itself.
Do you truly know who your potential customers are and what pains them the most? Do you know how much money they have, how they spend it and when they spend it? Have you ever worked in their industry? If you don't have domain knowledge, if not expertise, talking to potential customers can be just as much a waste of time as premature coding in my opinion.
As an example, I once worked on a consulting engagement for a company that sells hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth of product into the K-12 market. While there are certainly some viable edtech startups, based on what I learned working with this company, I would never consider trying to build an edtech business that has to sell at the school or classroom level.
Bottom line: the famous Peter Lynch principle, "invest in what you know", should be applied to entrepreneurship.