How having a technical background may keep your tech startup from being successful

When you come from a technical background and you are building your own startup or small tech business, you may think you have a brilliant idea and you’re building an awesome product that would be the perfect solution for some people/ companies. We all do that.

Sometimes it is like that, but many times it is not really. 

What happens with most of the people in this situation is that they are so focused on the product, the development and the idea they had that they lose some truly important aspects of the business. 

Let me be concise here. Adding new features, improving current functionalities, making the product “perfect” before getting (enough) paying clients and conducting in-depth market research is a successful way of spending money that won’t necessarily bring value for your business.

You most probably have an idea about who is your ideal customer but are you developing your solution for yourself of for them? What I mean is that you may be in love with your product and you are developing it as you think the perfect solution looks like instead of looking at the situation from the customer’s perspective. And the difference of perception may surprise you.

Because in the end it will be easy and successful for you to market and sell your solution only if you know exactly what are their pains, needs and what is the language they’re using to describe them. 

They don’t need all the cool features and everything to be perfect to try, love and recommend your solution. They want to see that you really understand their problems, their needs and you are listening and building the product for them. 

Selling and making money to reinvest in your business is way more important than having the product 10/10 with all the features you could think about.

There are some things that could save you a lot of money, time and energy invested in building and growing the business.

• Zoom out, look at the bigger picture, change your perspective into a customer one and see if the things you are working on right now are really a necessity that would make someone pay for the product or just a nice-to-have feature.
• Get to talk with 50 or 100 of your potential clients and see how they describe their situation, the solution that would improve their life/business and the pains they are having right now. 
• Go to the drawing board, see what matters and make a difference and spend your resources wisely. 

Remember that getting paying customers to validate and fuel your business is more important than having a “perfect” product.