Founders Skip Validation, Build Wrong Thing

“I actually think the interesting problem starts after the strategy. The 3-pillar framework is solid but turning it into enough good content every week without the strategist/founder becoming the bottleneck is where I’ve been seeing a very different problem. I’ve been testing a solution for that. Happy to share if useful.”

“Being an entrepreneur is living in a bell curve up and down is the way we go. Your pivots are smart, however from what I read looks like you’re only hitting niches. Would like to know about your web dev business and see how that can be monetized for you more profitably:) I am a serial entrepreneur and maybe I can offer you a little guidance. Peter”

“The next step isn’t more feature prompting. Start asking the AI how an experienced engineer would try to break what you have. “What are the production-readiness basics for this stack?” “Threat-model this app.” “Review the auth flow against OWASP.” And the really useful one: “What don’t I know enough to ask about yet?” Then work through the boring stuff. Auth and permissions. Secrets. Database access and backups. Input validation. Dependencies. Logging. Rate limits. Rollbacks. Privacy. Make it ex”

IA

“What ? I mentioned actual core coding language basics ANYONE building anything outside of a website needs to know at a root level. Geezus.”

“The point about audience mismatch is relatable. Most people building in public accidentally end up marketing to other broke founders rather than actual paying customers. Sharing retrospective lessons instead of live metrics sounds like a smarter play..”

/remindme 180 Or some shit lol.

“Only issue is I can't enforce that bet 🥲, let's check again when your codebase gets idk 2000 users.”

“Honestly, if it’s you steering the ship, it’s up to you to learn these best practices these days. You could drop this same post as a prompt into CC and action out a pathway to learn the basics.”

“The part about " people underestimate how much of marketing is just watching what already works for someone else. But what's important is taking what you observe and making it work for YOU. Not anyone else! Alot of times people get stuck trying to duplicate...but it never works. But somehow it's the gift that keeps on giving, because it's a constant thing!”

“I am an internventional radiologist. I get approached for new devices all the time. 1) many new devices may have a good motivation, but they are more complex, cumbersome to use and much more expensive than what we already have. So the small potential benefit doesnt outweigh all the other costs. 2) you need to talk to docs, engineers sales people etc. try going to a conference in the specialty/topic and see whats out there and why your idea will be different or better.”

“demo calls as the north star metric is the way, code that never ships is just a really expensive journal.”

“balance is the wrong frame, build and outreach are one pipeline. a week of building with zero customer conversations usually means you shipped something nobody specific asked for. the fix is a hard weekly quota of intro calls, then let what people say on those decide the next build. on a tool that manages both, i havent seen one, they log activity but cant tell you which conversation to have next, so track demo calls booked per week, not features shipped.”

Every launch story on here follows the same script: "I built an app in a weekend and hit $2k MRR in 10 days." ​Then you try it yourself from actual zero. No…

“Absolutely. And again I have to use that hated but necessary term - it depends. It depends on your skills, your team, your connections, your surroundings, etc. If you just start cold calling people you don't know, you will get 0 respnces. If you go to events and meetups and present your prototype, you are likely to get those responses others mentioned - "Yeah, this looks cool", "Let me know when it's available", "I'd use it"... Again, 99% of those won&#3”

“I’ve been thinking about how different entrepreneurship looks from the outside compared to when you're actually in it. Before starting, most people focus on the big things-getting customers, making money, building a brand, and growing. But once you're actually working on a business, you realise that a lot of the difficult parts are things nobody really talks about. For me, one of the biggest lessons has been that you don’t need to have everything figured out before you start. You learn a”

“Getting the first 10 paid users is wayyyyy harder then building it. Id say the majority of being a succesful startup is more about the distribution/marketing than the building itself.”

“9/10 founders I’ve talked don’t struggle with building but distribution. Because being a founder and a domain expert, you will not struggle with how to build and what to build. However marketing is a whole different game in itself. That’s why building in public works so well for founders. You just need to share what you’re building, personal lessons and daily progress. This can get you so many views and early users as well. I know this works cuz I’ve helped a CTO grow her personal brand through”

“depends on you - if you know how to sell - then building is hard - if you know how to build - then selling is hard - if you know how to build and how to sell - they you're not on reddit”

“It's gonna be hard for you to raise any serious capital without a prototype, especially with no background in the field.”

“You’re asking the right questions, and I would resist building a full prototype before you have evidence around one very specific training problem. I’d split discovery into two tracks: Users: students, residents, surgeons/clinicians and simulation-faculty staff. Ask about the last time a simulator failed them: what procedure they were practising, what felt unrealistic, what workaround they used, and what consequence it created for training, confidence, time or outcomes. Buyers: simulation-centre”

“Much appreciated. My experience in entrepreneurship has been b2b. getting users d2c has been the most challenging part. The b2b side of things like relationships, partnerships, etc has been a lot more easier lift. However, none of that matters if we cant get users and customers lol. Its been humbling”

“Requirements are intentions, QA is the proof.I see massive gaps in QA out there. How did this come to be? I am not sure. I have been heads down on my own startups and didn't realize how QA was changing - at least in certain communities.It has been long known that handing QA to the same person who wrote the code is usually going to be ineffective. Psychologically, it is non-trivial. You almost need a healthy competitive setup ( not to psychotic levels ) to get the best out of those who write the”

“This is interesting because I'd say maybe try an industry you know rather... but in this case I'd say the best research you could possibly do it actually "shadow" someone in the industry to really understand it because you may see it differently from there perspective.”

“I don't see the point anymore to posting to reddit about your business. People on reddit seem to be skewing more and more immature and inexperienced on subs like this. I don't see the value. Your content won't be seen nearly as much because they, for whatever thing they want to complain about, they'll downvote despite it being reasonable content and will then attack it as AI made, virtually every time. I'd use a different platform, but that's me. Feels like reddit is kind”

“What helped me was treating the first version like a test, not “the business.” Build the smallest thing you can put in front of 2-3 people this week. Once somebody reacts to something real, the fear drops a lot because you’re no longer arguing with yourself in your head.”

“Skip the 15 minute call, ask one planner if you can tag along for an afternoon in peak season. People are terrible at describing their own workflow but they can't hide it when you're standing next to them.”

Getting customers

“That makes sense. Our initial setup is already very lightweight - businesses can create their storefront in about a minute, so the goal is more founder-assisted than founder-dependent onboarding. When you switched to automatic onboarding, what change made the biggest difference for you?”

Make sense, have you built anything or still searching for an idea?

“honestly, for me the hardest part would be knowing what to build first. it’s easy to spend money on development before you’ve proven people actually want the thing, and fixing that mistake later gets expensive fast.”

“I’m curious what part of the process has been the biggest headache for you: Validating whether people actually want the idea Finding a reliable developer Getting the first few customers Building the MVP Finding the right people to work with Knowing what to build first Managing development/product work Marketing and getting traction Raising money / managing finances Turning early users into paying customers Something completely different? Would be interesting to hear what founders are actually st”

“makes sense, i'll keep that in mind. i guess coffee chats are more of a finance thing, with founders it's probably better to cut straight to the chase. should my question be about the technical aspects of their product or their journey/career?”

“I've found the first users usually come from one painfully specific use case, not the whole product, and for me redditmaster helped more with finding those exact threads than trying to spray the thing everywhere. once I stopped thinking about signups and just focused on one narrow action people would actually do twice, things got a lot less dumb.”

“Thank you for your opinion. Points taken. I guess intention is important and that’s something I can’t convey over text. I was hoping to have a discussion about the framework/content not the other stuff like AI slop or intentions. I have also FAT FIREd for 5 years myself so am doing this to help others. We ran charity conferences every year and raise tens of thousands of dollars to charities the participants are passionate about. From domestic violence, children’s hospital to koala rescue etc. Th”

“This idea is actually kinda sick. We are definitely in that era of being able to create the ideas we have on a whim much easier. Kudos to you for taking action!”

“The founders who close rounds fastest are the ones who can explain exactly why THIS person building THIS thing matters more than the idea itself.”

“A few months ago I started building a product that would directly impact my family. The idea was simple: I’m a dad of 3, and every birthday we get the same question from family: “What should we get them?” Meanwhile, our house definitely doesn’t need another 20 toys. So I built a registry where family can give money toward a kid’s future instead -- savings, a 529, investments, whatever the parent chooses. The cool part: I’m not a software engineer. I’ve built the entire thing using Lovable + Supa”

“the iteration speed thing is real but the bottleneck usually isnt research or content generation, its getting enough signal from real users to know what to iterate on. How are you getting enough traffic to actually validate those 20 hypotheses before you burn out on testing?”

“How do you respond to online criticism that your company sends low potency product or sometimes just doesn't ship at all? Then your "support" team offers no help whatsoever, probably because it's an AI bot.”

“Silicon Valley gifs aside, I have a working theory that most people think what they build is so awesome that people will flock to it or immediately see the value of it. Reality is that people have so much noise in their lives (especially since ~2020, and maybe 2015 for the politically inclined) that they severely underestimate distribution and eventually give up. Again, working theory, probably biased, etc.”

“the research step is where most solo founders either over-invest or skip entirely, and both kill you. the real leverage isn't just speed of iteration, it's having a structured way to kill weak ideas before you burn a cycle building them out.”

“Today, saying "I'm a founder" can carry prestige. If everyone were a founder, the title itself would mean very little. The valuable question would become: "What problem are you solving, and how much value are you creating?" lets know each other what u are doing? submitted by /u/Aish-m1999 [link] [comments]”

Never thought about that, thanks

“Sometimes the extra analysis isn't for you, it's for whoever you have to convince afterward. I usually know what I want to ship pretty fast, but if I bring a co-founder or investor a hunch instead of a deck, it gets picked apart in the room. So I've started separating "what do I need to decide" from "what do I need to defend the decision." The first one is almost always faster than people think. The second one is where all the time actually goes, and it's wort”

“Follow-up question, what's your model provider of choice? Makes the parsing a lot easier. EDIT; Agentic Claude Opus guy here.”

“yeah, not a criticism, just made me smile and a novell idea for a product, so good luck!”

Gotta practice what you preach lol I use my own app too

assuming it gets launched at all

“Great question. I found myself tweaking copy on my landing page. I know, I know. Meanwhile I had a founder that I was working with that had experienced value that I should have been talking to about becoming a paying customer What’s helped me is each day I ask, “what’s the most important thing I can do today to move towards my goal”. It’s what I help the founders I work with do too”

“You said you caught yourself doing this yesterday. What were you building, and what was the less comfortable thing you knew you should have been doing instead? That’s the difficult part for me: afterwards the procrastination is obvious, but while I’m doing it, it feels exactly like work.”

Buy, then build.

“I think you're asking "which marketing channel?" one step too early. Your niche probably isn't productivity . Your product solves a more specific moment: "I know what I need to do, but the task feels too big/vague and I don't know how to start." That's much easier to market than "be more productive." And there is already evidence people want this. Goblin Tools built a very successful product around breaking overwhelming tasks into smaller steps, part”

“I advise startups all the time and the one thing I always tell them, the product does not have to be good, perfect, or even work well, it just needs to solve their problem in the way they want it solved. I also extend that to basically not build anything until you have a customer that the pain is so great they will pay you tomorrow if you could solve it partially. I see so many spending days on the perfect name, logo, spending money to get NDA's and Patents. All that matters at some point, b”

I completely agree with what he’s saying it’s not what you know. It’s who you know. Well, I have a disadvantage of both sides. I built a really good product basically by…

“I would separate this into three conversations rather than treating "the customer" as one person. First, talk to trainees about the last procedure or skill they struggled to practise and what happened because realistic practice was unavailable. Second, talk to instructors about where current training fails and what evidence would make them adopt a new method. Third, talk to whoever controls the budget and procurement process about what would be required to approve even a small pilot. Y”

“Split the role's first month into work that is already repeatable and work that still needs discovery. Estimate how many hours of founder judgment each bucket needs. Candidate B may fit the repeatable bucket if the breakdown becomes a reusable checklist. Candidate A may fit discovery work if she can leave decisions documented before the internship ends. Ask each candidate for a 30-day handoff plan against that real backlog. Compare the system each person would leave behind after the month. I”

“To be sure, you should have started socialising your idea back when it was a mere idea. How do you know you’ve created something people might want? How do you know if you’ve executed in-line with expectations?”