The sage advice often repeated in the startup world goes a little like this; Identify a problem, get some funding, build your product to solve the problem, adjust it to the market as you go and achieve Product/Market fit. Get some more funding and then focus on growth. But what this admittedly good advice skips over is the part before identifying a problem.

So if there is one thing I would tell prospective startup founders, it is this; before you start building a product or solution, find an audience. Finding an audience big enough to make a viable business, underserved by current solutions and willing to spend money, comes before thinking about a product or solution because even the best products don’t sell enough to pay the rent if a viable audience isn’t there.

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