At my first startup, Twish, we aimed to use stories and animated content to modernize teaching and add context to what was being taught. We decided to initially reach students through MBA colleges around where we lived.
I expected the first step was to build out full courses and then start selling it. However my co-founders told me that we should first start selling to these MBA colleges and get some contracts. The conversation went something like this:
“How can we sell stuff we haven’t built yet?!”
“We need to first get some sales.”
“But what if they ask us to come in and do a course on short notice?! We’ll lose all credibility.”
“We’ll build it quickly then if it comes to that.”
My co-founders prevailed and we compromised by building some demo videos that we could use for our conversations. As it turned out, they were right. No one wanted what we were selling and we could have spent a lot of time and money (since animation is expensive) building stuff that we couldn’t get paid for.
This lesson has stuck with me – sell before you build, because sales is the only proof that people want what you’re building.