A Good Product Is Not the Same as a Successful Business — Here's How to Turn One Into the Other "If you build it, they will come" is terrible advice for startups. Here's why.
By Aytekin Tank Edited by Kara McIntyre
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"If you build it, they will come."
That's the famous phrase whispered by mysterious, disembodied voices to Ray Kinsella, an Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner in the 1989 film "Field of Dreams," urging him to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield. ("They," in this case, refers to the spirits of dead legendary baseball players.)
While this may have been great advice for Ray, this wisdom does not apply to starting a business. In the startup world, building a product — even a really good one — is not a guarantee of success.
Building a product is just the first step
Engineers often assume that their ability to build a product means that the product will automatically sell. They focus only on the technology, wrongly believing that the same otherworldly forces that drew baseball players to Kinsella's field will also draw users to their product. To date, I have never heard of this happening.
In fact, building the product isn't even the most challenging part of starting a business — you also need to determine if there's a market for what you've made and reach the people who will use it.
Unfortunately for a lot of developers, connecting a product with users is a different skill set than simply building it, which is why so many businesses fail to launch. Here's a better approach.
Start with a side hustle
So how to determine if your great idea will attract users? Keep your day job, build your product on the side and release it.
It's a less glamorous option than going all in on an idea from Day 1, but it's also much less risky. It's a tried and true recipe for success: Google, Twitter, SpaceX and Apple were all born as off-the-clock projects their founders tinkered with alongside their day jobs.
Maybe you think you don't have the time to pursue a side project. To which I say: Nobody does. But if you're truly interested in the project you're working on, you'll find the time, whether it's by cutting back on your evening Netflix, getting up earlier or squeezing it in between bites of lunch at the office.
If you're lucky enough to have a few uninterrupted hours to work on your project, you may find it tough to get started, no matter how passionate you are about what you're working on. I agree with management consultant and YouTuber Claire Siyan Li, who writes in Harvard Business Review that the important thing is just to push through the first 10 or 15 minutes. After that, you'll enter a state of flow, where you're completely absorbed in the work that you're doing. If you can get past the initial bout of resistance, Li says, "you will likely find that dedicating time to your passion is more invigorating than depleting."
Know that the first time (probably) won't be a charm
So you've chipped away at your product on nights and weekends and released it to the world. You've figured out the market you want to reach, and how to get it in front of them. Except … no one is biting. Your product is a flop.
I understand. I developed many products before I landed on Jotform, the company I founded back in 2006, which has since reached more than 25 million users worldwide. Each of those failed attempts started as a good idea — and that's also where they ended.
Those early failures may not have worked out in the long run, but they taught me valuable lessons. For one thing, I had no idea how to create a sustainable business model. I was selling software as a one-time purchase, a losing strategy since every sale required finding a new customer. I couldn't get my product revenues to increase, and no matter how hard I worked, the line stayed flat. It was a tough lesson at the time, but I know better now — and luckily, I learned it while continuing to collect a paycheck at my full-time job.
Related: This Is the Framework to Make Your Product a Smash Success
Use AI to your advantage
Founders entering the startup space now have an indispensable tool that wasn't available even a few years ago: AI. While it can't do all the heavy lifting for you, would-be entrepreneurs would be foolish not to take advantage of the wisdom LLMs have to offer.
With the right prompts, ChatGPT can help founders vet their ideas, analyze market trends and assess the competitive landscape. Save time and energy by asking it to craft targeted questions for customer surveys, or list out the pain points the product has the potential to solve. Building a startup is tiring, and it's important to delegate as much as possible to the incredibly advanced tools we have at our disposal.
When it comes to launching a business, building the product is just the start: You also have to make sure there's a market, iterate until you find the right fit, and use every tool at your disposal — including AI — to reach potential customers. When you view your startup as an ongoing experiment rather than a one-shot gamble, you'll be more resilient, more informed and far likelier to succeed in the long run.
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