Dear X,
Thank you for giving me your product demo the other day. Even though it was probably about 36th time I saw a chatGPT-inspired MVP/PoC and you mostly put together some open source APIs, I still appreciate your thinking of me and walking me through the demo.
But later in the meeting I was a little concerned, as when I said you might want to find a business cofounder, you didn’t seem to be terribly excited by the idea.
My suggestion wasn’t supposed to be any discount on your abilities. I know you’re good, with 3 years of Google SWE experience under your belt. I know your friends – the team you’re trying to put together – are brilliant product folks from Amazon and Meta.
However, what you need to do eventually is not to show off your product building chops with cool demos, which is pretty much what you’ve been doing the past year or so under the cool name of “hacking around”. What you need to do is to build a real business with revenue.
Feature < Product < Business. Which one are you building?
When you’re building features or products, you don’t have to worry about any of these: how to get customers, how to generate revenue through a sustainable business and pricing model, how to create profit, how much you have to raise to get to the profitability, how to put together an A team and make sure the team gets as motivated as you and works their ass off, for years to come.
But it’s all these “other things” that make businesses businesses. And you don’t have much experience in these areas. Isn’t it logical to find and bring in someone who’s more experienced in these areas?
Don’t get me wrong, I like you and I know you’re good. I’m saying these because I’m pulling for you. You should be a true entrepreneur, not a wantrepreneur, and to do so, you should build a business, not a string of cool demos. Let’s please find that missing piece (namely, someone who can help you w/ business and team building) ASAP!