Don't take risks

Build it and they will come is a phrase for amateurs, parents raising children with their fingers crossed, and broke corn farmers.

Everyone thinks entrepreneurs take outsized risk, but the ones worth their salt identify as world-class risk mitigators.

All you need’s a prototype, a rendering, a book title or a subscriber form.

The amateur falls in love with one idea for a business or product, talks to their three closest friends about it, then spend months or years trying to build, knowing it’ll kill.

Then, crickets.

There’s an easier, cheaper, faster, less stressful and perfectly demand-aligned way to launch a product or business: validate it before it exists.

This newsletter you’re reading is something I’ve been meaning to write regardless of validation (I suck at learning unless I’m trying to teach it).

Gotta admit: I did not validate this idea before starting.

But I am actively creating about 30 other simple newsletter sites of different topics and titles. I’ll spend $300-500 running ads to them - the one with the most subscribers wins.

This way I don’t have to spend 12 months of my life, an hour a day writing words nobody will read (willing to do that here for at least 100 days).

Find the way to validate your idea without any extra work (likely involves Meta ads, $1 deposits, and/or preorders), and focus one day’s efforts on just getting it online.

That one day could save you months or years of heartache.

You’ve got a new product coming out soon. You’re thinking of a new business idea.

Any time you get a new idea that could have legs, let a notification ding in your head that asks, “any way to get customers/users before it exists?”

There’s a way.

God speed,

Mike

Today’s inspiration: Exactly how to validate your business idea for $15 by Chris Koerner