Google and Facebook are moonshots by extremely talented people. I don’t know about you, but I have no close to zero chances of building something similar.
It’s wiser to be realistic, find problems businesses have, understand them better than anyone else and try to solve them.
EG. some dropshipping platforms don’t have integrations with some e-commerce platforms, interview dropshippers and build the ones they’d need. It might not be fancy, but it works.
I respect this more than people that try and change the world with a new decentralised web 3.0 no one will ever use
EDIT: you added a reference that your thoughts are for B2C. But Facebook and Google are B2B, the Cs are the product
So, are there any examples of something that started with the selling first building later?
Sure, for a small operation that is not particularly innovative you can do that. You can first sell someone a house and later build it but I am not aware of a product that made it big by consulting the potential users without having a product(MVP or even a POC) in hand. Usually, it seems, people start with a product that they have some kind of awareness of its purpose and value, measure the reactions and iterate it thereafter.
I mean, if selling first and building later is the right way to do a start-up, there must be people who actually succeeded with their start-ups by selling first and building later but I'm yet to hear about one.
Also I don’t think there is a right way of doing a startup, there’s no guide you can follow or rules. What I’m saying is that addressing real problems and talking with people that have the authority and budget to address them before building something seems like a good way to minimize risk for b2b ventures.
Anyway the advice of sell first build later and talk to customers sound very smart, it's just that it I don't see much of success stories based on that process.
On the other hand, build something basic, put it in front of the people, measure and iterate based on the measurements have so many examples. Like pretty much everything out there.
So yes, the stuff on the article sound smart but is it?
Tuft and Needle started selling with a fake landing page to validate their idea.
Once they got their first sale for a mattress they started working on the company.
(source: their indiehackers interview)
Hotjar started a super successful referral campaign before having a working product.
Pietr Levels validated features with a fake credit card form to see if people would pay for some membership.
And there are countless other examples. Building a landing page that explains the product or a proof of concept isn’t building the product, if something can help you give the idea of what you have in mind build it.
Oh, it happens to me too. As techies maybe we think in the context of "Wouldn't be cool if..." and just really want to believe that it's not just cool but actually people will use it and pay for it and ignore the signs of the opposite as long as we can because it's really cool and sure people will come around and see how cool it is if I can make it shinier.
>you added a reference that your thoughts are for B2C. But Facebook and Google are B2B, the Cs are the product
It still holds though, they had the product(the users) first. They did not start as companies that figured out that they need users by first selling ad spaces to companies and talking to them. They had something valuable in hand(usres) and iterated the business models through the years.
Facebook was created to solve Mark's problem of accessing a pipeline of hot girls to sleep with. It grew because while solving his problem he solved the exactly same type of problem the other people had, including the hot girls who needed a pipeline to pretty boys/jocks/nerds/etc to sleep with.
The clean product we currently know came much later.
It’s wiser to be realistic, find problems businesses have, understand them better than anyone else and try to solve them.
EG. some dropshipping platforms don’t have integrations with some e-commerce platforms, interview dropshippers and build the ones they’d need. It might not be fancy, but it works. I respect this more than people that try and change the world with a new decentralised web 3.0 no one will ever use
EDIT: you added a reference that your thoughts are for B2C. But Facebook and Google are B2B, the Cs are the product