I read this several weeks ago but I really like it and have been thinking about it a lot so want to post it here for a reminder for myself.
It’s a post by Jason Freedman. You can read it here.
I often get distracted and think about all kinds of things that I need to look into, like talking to investors, getting terms and conditions right, making connections etc. That’s all you read in the startup world online so it makes me nervous that I might not be spending enough time doing that. But honestly, Jason is right. Customers don’t care how you build the product—they care about the product. So let’s focus on that.
I also realized that when people tell me “you need to be out there and talking to potential investors”—there are different degrees of “talking” that you can do. For example, our product is not out yet so I’m very hesitant about talking to anyone that I don’t know about the business in details. I often struggle with how much information I should reveal, and whenever I politely give a vague-enough answer, I end up feeling a bit awkward. But the more I engaged in such conversation, the more I realized that people are often okay with this vague answer, and there are still a lot of critical feedback that I can get from talking generally about industry problems and solutions.
So by “talking to investors” it’s not necessarily that you talk to them or pitch to them about your business. It’s talking to them about your interest, your passion, your industry, your insights etc. And just being around to keep yourself familiar in the scene. That’s what it is.
Even as I write this, it is still somewhat hard for me to “talk” to strangers at networking events without being able to really “talk” to them about my product. But it’s definitely more clear now.