[cercatrova]

It's what I commonly see on startup fora including HN, reddit, IndieHackers etc. There's books about this method like Lean Startup, Mom Test and so on.

The advice to build first and market later is actually advice that is much maligned in my experience, as there are too many stories of engineers who build and then find out they can't actually sell their product because they focused too much on the building and not enough on getting people to know about it.

[ipaddr]

The approach to validate ideas with conversation with your target market when you are unsure if anyone will buy.

But in this case you need to validate it by building it and proving it can be done. The market is already prepped.

[cercatrova]

> in this case

In which case, Web3? If so, I don't think the market is prepped at all, I don't really see people using it for what proponents say it'll be used for. If some other case, please elucidate me, I'm not sure what you're referring to otherwise.

[ipaddr]

The market is ready for a product that hasn't come, so build it.

[lottin]

> they can't actually sell their product because they focused too much on the building and not enough on getting people to know about it

Or more likely, there was no demand for their product to begin with.

[cercatrova]

Indeed, the worst is when they don't actually solve any problems whatsoever, they treat it as a way to have fun building the product, using new technologies, new architectures etc.

There's nothing wrong with building to learn but the problem arises when engineers think building automatically leads to business success; the two are often entirely disjointed. WordPress is maligned as well but it's wildly successful for Automattic.