[nfw2]

Maybe it's not common wisdom in general, but it is a pretty common viewpoint in the startup world. Building products is expensive, and startups can't afford to build something no one wants. It's pretty much universal advise that finding an initial market fit should be the first priority of any new startup.

Literally making a sale before the product exists is the extreme end of that philosophy. Whether or not this is good advise, or even possible, probably depends a lot on the domain. For most domains though, there is some degree of market research that can and should be done before investing in product development.

[aquateen]

I've been on this website a long time and I suppose the userbase has grown quite a bit. I don't assume everyone has read all of Paul Graham's articles or even know who he is, but are you familiar with how YCombinator works?

Enough money to survive on ramen for a few months and build a demo. Get feedback from users and iterate over and over.

[nfw2]

I know multiple people personally who have been through YC, and I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

Not every company that goes through YC are at the same stage. I've heard of companies joining YC despite already having over a million in ARR because of how valuable the YC network is.

YC invests 125k in each team, which is certainly enough to last more than a few months eating ramen if you are building the product yourself.

Also, trying to sell a product using a demo is not exactly the same as selling a finished product. At 0-1 stage, you can bet the demo hides the rough edges to some degree.

I would say selling using a demo falls somewhere on the sell-before-build spectrum, but one point I was trying to make is that it is not necessarily black-and-white.

[aquateen]

The point is that YC's model contradicts what you said. It's relatively inexpensive to build an initial version of a product. Build something as quickly as possible, get user feedback, and keep iterating.

I can guarantee you won't find anything Paul Graham has written about doing a bunch of marketing analysis as a first step.

[nfw2]

I said market research, not marketing analysis. I don't mean focus groups and A-B tests and ad words.

No YC company is literally in stage 1 of its existence. First you need to get into YC, and you probably won't if you don't know anything about the market you are trying to reach.

[hooande]

> Enough money to survive on ramen for a few months and build a demo. Get feedback from users and iterate over and over.

This is indeed the original idea behind YCombinator. That was a very long time ago. Things have changed, both with the YCombinator company and the ethos of this web community.