rishabh

I'm building an early-stage product, and one thing I'm trying to get better at is separating genuine demand from people being encouraging.

"I'd definitely use this" A growing waitlist. Someone asking for five more features before they'll sign up. As a founder, you really want those things to mean you're onto something.

What signal made you think "this is working" but turned out to mean very little? And what do you trust instead now?

Would love specific stories, especially the ones that changed how you build or sell.

At what point does a product become ready to talk to investors?

When you have users?
Revenue?
A clear business model?
A certain number of people using it?

Especially for solo or small-team makers, it feels twice as hard to reach all of these points alone - while continuing to build the product without income and bootstrapping everything.

At some point, it starts to feel like an infinite loop:

We re all naturally a little better at some things than others.

I ve been thinking about what skills and behaviors make me me. =)

I think some of them come with our DNA. Others are things we practice and practice until they become part of us.

And maybe the interesting part is learning how to make our strengths even stronger, while quieting the ones that sometimes make our path harder.