Customers are harder than investors
In 2021, I quit my fancy tech job and founded my own startup.
It was called Roost.
Roost built energy-efficient single-family homes using prefabrication technology.
Admittedly, I politely rage-quit my job without a plan (story for another day...).
Within 2 days of quitting, I decided to start Roost.
Within 5 days, I made a pitch deck and applied to an incubator
The next week, I got in.
Within 2 weeks of leaving W2 life, I had funding.
Within 3 months of participating in the incubator, about a dozen other investors had reached out to invest.
But within 6 months, I wound down Roost and sold it back to my architect business partner.
(I wrote about it here if you're interested!)
Why?
Simple:
Funding isn't the hard part;
Customers are the hard part.
Now, that isn't to say that funding isn't hard.
Funding IS hard. Especially these days.
But it's not as hard as:
Getting in front of customers
Convincing them to buy your product
Running a business that can deliver what you've promised them
Investors invest because they think you're making a good bet about the future.
Customers buy because of what you can actually do.
Want to impress me?
Don't tell me how much you have in funding;
Tell me how many customers you serve.
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