Building a Great Product

If you want to build a great startup, here’s the uncomfortable truth: you’ve gotta sit your ass down and build a great product. Not a press kit. Not a LinkedIn post. Not a pitch deck. A PRODUCT.

In the last part of this series, we talked about startup ideas. This one’s about turning that chaotic, late-night, shower-thought idea into something real, a product that people actually love.

One of the most important jobs of a founder isn’t raising money or collecting fancy titles like Pokémon cards. It’s making sure your company builds a kickass product. Until you do that, literally nothing else matters.

Let’s get real for a second. When you hear really successful founders talk about their early days, they’re usually:

• Sitting in front of a computer

• Building product

• Talking to users

That’s it. No TED talks. No startup summits. Just coffee, code, and customer complaints.

If your calendar looks like a VC's (full of meetings, intros, and strategy calls), you're probably doing it wrong. Be skeptical if your time allocation doesn’t look like:

Build. Talk. Sleep. Repeat.

That’s the YC way.

At Y Combinator, they have this golden rule: work on your product, talk to users, exercise, sleep and do very little else. That’s your full-time job. PR? Ignore it. Conferences? Skip. Advisor meetings? Maybe later. BD partnerships? Lol, no.

Step 1: Build something people LOVE

YC has this golden line: "It’s better to build something a small number of users LOVE than something a large number kinda like."

When users love what you’ve built, magic happens: they talk. They tell their friends. They tweet about it. They annoy their coworkers until everyone tries it. That’s what organic growth looks like. No paid ads, no influencers, no begging.

If you catch yourself saying, “It’s okay we’re not growing because we have this big partnership coming up…” RUN. That’s a red flag. A huge one. 🚩

Early organic growth = your product is actually solving a real problem. If it’s not happening, your product’s not good enough yet. Brutal, but true.

Also, stop worrying about competitors raising truckloads of cash. Most startups don’t die because of competitors, they die because they waste time and forget to make something people love. Don’t be one of them.

Because over the long run, great products win.

Keep it Simple

Users don’t fall in love with feature-packed, bloated tools. They fall in love with simple, elegant things that work really well. Think about the products you use every day. They probably started out super simple.

Look at every successful company. They all started with something painfully simple. Google? A box and a button. Instagram? Filters. Even Notion started as just docs. Simplicity forces you to do one thing extremely well. And in the early days, that’s all you need.

Recruit your first users by hand literally. Talk to people. Show them what you’re building. Ask for feedback. Don’t waste money on Google Ads just yet. You don’t need thousands of users. You need a handful who care enough to give you feedback every day and eventually fall in love with your product.

Get Feedback — The Old School Way

In the early days, you don’t need a hundred users. You need one someone who will give you feedback daily and eventually love your product.

Don’t waste money buying Google Ads to get early users. Go find them. Stalk your audience (in a legal way, of course). Recruit by hand. Be annoying (but lovable).

Metrics that Matter

Once people start using your product, measure what matters. These are your North Stars:

• Total registrations

• Total active users

• Total activity levels (DAUs/WAUs etc.)

• Cohort retention (how many users stick around?)

• Revenue (yes, money still matters)

• Net Promoter Score (aka: will they tattoo your logo on their forehead?)

Don’t track vanity metrics. Track traction.

---

Building a product is not glamorous. It’s not always fun. But it’s the one thing that will actually take your startup from zero to "shut up and take my money."

And hey! if you’re staring at your screen at 2AM wondering if this is all worth it? It is. Keep building. ❤️