[jaf656s]

There's a really good point in here that I had to learn the hard way: one of a founder's most valuable assets is a deep understanding of the customer's problem(s) and how to solve them.

The tech is far less important.

She first tried a naive tech-focused approach and realized that she didn't understand the problem well enough and making adjustments to the tech was slowing her learning down too much.

She made a great decision to optimize for learning speed and temporarily build a more traditional custom-fit bra business. She has learned a lot about the problem space and what makes a good solution.

Now she's using technology as a tool to enhance and optimize the process that already arrives at a good solution.

We do the same thing when we write code:

  1. understand the problem
  2. write a correct solution
  3. optimize the solution

When it comes to coding we know Knuth's Law of optimization by heart, but still make the same mistake in other contexts.

[HenryTheHorse]

> one of a founder's most valuable assets is a deep understanding of the customer's problem(s) and how to solve them.

IMHO, it's the ONLY thing that matters - and like you, I too learned it the hard way. Optimizing for non-existent (or non-critical) problems is a very common mistake.

[gowld]

The failure mode here seems to be assuming that every business must be a "tech" business.