Listening Before Building: De-Risking Startups Early

As an investor, I admire founders who haven’t built much yet but have significantly de-risked their venture by engaging with potential customers.

They’ve identified pain points and developed a thesis on what needs to exist to solve these problems. They prioritize understanding the problem through customer conversations over immediate technological development.

When developers dive into building too quickly, relying solely on hunches, they gamble with uncertain odds—sometimes as low as 5% or as high as 90%, but there’s no way to know until it’s built and measured.