“We’ve finally built the product that we’d want to use.”
Those were the exact words a technical cofounder recently used to describe his product to his team. He couldn’t be more wrong…
Most startups build products for people other than themselves. The founders might be part of the demographic but more often than not they are not THE demographic. Or the full spectrum of the demography. There are exceptions of course — the team of hackers which builds tools for developers. But even the car mechanic who builds the “perfect” car mechanics software represents only one very specific fraction of the market.
You have to build your product for your customers. At least if you want to do this as a business. By all means — make sure you love your product as well. But never forget the customer.