Original Summary

Been turning that Paul Graham phrase over since I was a kid reading essays off an old CRT monitor, and it took way longer than expected to actually get what make something people want means. Especially once you're the one actually shipping software instead of just reading about it. First phase for me was just building the software. Felt good, but it wasn't enough. A tech news site two friends and I built, where I spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time on the design, made zero dollars in revenue and we shut it down after a few weeks. We never once checked if enough people actually wanted to read another tech news site. We shipped what we thought was cool, not what anyone was paying for. The real unlock was almost the opposite of building, just shut up and listen. Spent months talking to founders in SF with no agenda, not pitching anything, just asking what tools they were using and where those tools failed them. Eventually patterns show up in what people actually want versus what you assume they want, and you start acquiring a taste for it. Three pivots and six launches later, one finally hit actual product market fit. About 20,000 people used it, and a Series B CEO told me the release was the biggest thing that had happened in his company's history, which is wild to hear after years of projects that made zero dollars. That whole listening phase is honestly why we built pumpGTM the way we did instead of shipping a fourth abandoned project. How long did it take you to actually validate demand before writing code, versus how long you spent building first and hoping. Curious if the listen first thing clicked early for people or if most of us learn it the expensive way.   submitted by   /u/namanyayg [link]   [comments]

  • 情报分类：商业与市场研究
  • 分类依据：内容涉及商业、投资或市场动态
  • 信息来源：Reddit · SaaS
  • 发布时间：2026/9/17 09:29:43