How do you know?

How do you really know? Sounds like a stupid question but I’m asking. How do you know?

Being involved in a few startups, I recently noticed a trend with everyone involved. The idea that “people want x” or “no one will do x unless we have y”. My question is how do you know?

Now part of this comes from frustration, its a startup, sure I want to make this a success but it amazes me how many times I have caught myself or others on the team in the holding pattern because of some artificial barrier.

The way I see it, you have two choices:

1. Guess and keep moving forward
2. Go ask the person who is going to be paying for it

Its not rocket science, at least not yet. Ask, I am always amazed how much further I can get when I just ask the simple question. Now I know a few people reading this are going to mention that you shouldn’t ask the client, only you know best. Which I tend to agree most of the time but there are cases (more often than not) that getting that feedback will change the way you think about the problem. Its the problem we are trying to solve, right?

So the next time assumptions are being made about our clients, products, etc., I am going to stop everything and go ask those who it will affect the most.

Startup tip #8

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