Collin Stewart

Can I ask a couple of questions first?

I'm like, no, tell me if you're building this.

Interesting.

And there was this, like, they were like stopping me and they're like, are you working on this?

Promise me you're working on this.

And I was like, oh, that's a really good signal that like, yeah.

I don't have to fight with them about you're doing it wrong.

You know, they're just telling me that build this thing.

I'll give you money.

And so we had paying customers for our, our like alpha crappy product, like very, very, very early.

Yep.

Yeah.

And we call that customer development.

Um, and this is like, you can read about this in the mom test or any of Steve blanks books on like how and where to focus the, the thing that I, the thing that I think I got wrong was like, I'm tactically, I just, I was, I was thinking of it as customer validation, which is like, Hey, this is the thing I built.

You know, the, when I started getting it right, what I realized was what the books don't

teach you is that you're talking to potential customers, but all the books just kind of say, hey, go interview people.

And then that's step one.

And then step two is build a sales team and go sell it.

And I was like, but what about all these people?

And honestly, that thought didn't connect for me until after the fact when like the second time going around, everybody who I interviewed, I shouldn't say everybody, but a high percentage of people that I had interviewed turned into paying customers.