You Love Building Products. That's Exactly Why They're Failing
Everyone in tech loves the launch.
The late-night coding sessions. The polished landing page. The big "Ship It!" button.
But almost no one talks about what happens the day after.
Or more specifically — why nothing happens.
The build trap.
That term might not ring a bell for most of you.
And honestly? That's the whole problem.
While you were busy perfecting features, you were caught in a cycle of building things nobody actually asked for.
This isn't some abstract theory.
It's the silent killer of thousands of well-funded, beautifully designed products. They weren't bad ideas. They were just solutions looking for a problem.
If you care about building something that people use—and pay for—keep reading.
Here are four rules to break the cycle:
You're Solving a Problem That Doesn't Exist
Have you ever built something just because you thought it was cool?
Of course you have.
That's founder conviction. It’s the source of passion, but it's also the source of the most expensive mistake in the business: building something nobody wants.
The fix? Stop guessing and start listening. De-risk your idea before you write a single line of code.
No focus groups.
No surveys asking "would you use this?"
Just an obsessive focus on what people are already doing.
People were torturing spreadsheets and complicated apps to manage their budgets. That wasn't a signal for a better spreadsheet. It was a scream for a dead-simple budgeting tool.
That's a market signal. A real one.
This isn't an accident. You can engineer this discovery.
You need to find the "Job-to-be-Done."
People don't buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy a drill because they want a hole in the wall.
Your users aren't looking for a "voice memo app." They're trying to "capture a genius idea before it vanishes" or "record a meeting so they don't get fired."
See the difference?
One is a feature. The other is a job.
Here's your actionable: before you spec out a single feature, go find the job.
Scour forums. Read reviews of your competitors' products. Find where people are complaining.
Where's the friction?
If you can't find it, you don't have a business. You have a hobby.
You're Building a Swiss Army Knife. They Just Need a Corkscrew.
Once you find a real problem, the temptation is to solve all of it. At once.
You start adding features. "What if they want this?" "Oh, and we'll need that!"
Soon, your sleek solution becomes a bloated monster. A Swiss Army knife with 50 tools that does none of them well.
This is where you swap the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for the MVE (Minimum Viable Experience).
An MVE isn't about building less. It's about building the right thing.
It’s the smallest, most polished version of your product that does one job perfectly.
It’s about finding the "magic moment" and delivering it flawlessly.
For a file-sharing app, it was seeing a file magically appear on another computer.
For a music app, it was identifying a song in a noisy bar.
That’s what you build. Just that.
This isn't about being lazy. It’s about being ruthless.
You have to say "no" to almost everything.
Sort your features into Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, and Won't-Have.
Your MVE is only the "Must-Haves." Period.
Want to apply this? Look at your product roadmap.
What's the one thing that makes a user say "wow"?
Build that. Make it fast. Make it reliable. Make it beautiful.
Turns out, focus feels like magic to a user. And magic converts.
You Think 'Launch Day' is the End. It's Day One.
You know the routine. You build, you launch, you cross your fingers.
That's the "launch and pray" model. And it's a losing strategy.
The launch isn't the finish line. It's the starting gun.
Shipping the product is not the same as finding a market for it.
And yet, most teams immediately pivot back to building the next feature, assuming the customers will just show up.
They won't.
The moment you launch, your job title changes. You're not a builder anymore.
You're in sales. Marketing. Growth.
The only metric that matters now isn't downloads or sign-ups. It's revenue.
Even if it's just one dollar.
That first dollar is the ultimate form of validation. It's proof someone values your solution enough to trade their hard-earned money for it.
Your only job post-launch is to get that proof.
This requires discipline.
For the next 30 days, declare a feature freeze. No new code.
Your entire focus is on getting your first 10, 20, 50 paying customers.
Talk to them. Watch them use your product. Find out why they paid (or why they didn't).
Tip for you: What's your plan for the first 100 customers?
If you don't have one, stop building.
Go-to-market isn't an afterthought. It's the whole game.
You Built a Great Product No One Can Find
A brilliant product that's invisible is worthless.
This might be the most painful failure of all. You did everything else right—you found a problem, you built a perfect MVE—but you're still stuck.
Why? You never solved distribution.
A superior product doesn't win. A superior product with superior distribution wins.
Too many founders think distribution is about running a few ads or posting on social media.
It's not a task. It's a system. A machine you have to build.
And it requires high-velocity experimentation.
Think of it like a scientist in a lab. You have a dozen potential growth channels (SEO, social platforms, partnerships, content, etc.). Your job is to test them. Quickly and cheaply.
You're looking for the one or two channels that deliver outsized results.
Today, those are often platforms with powerful organic content engines.
You don't need a huge budget. You need a system.
Understand the Game: Every platform has its own rules. Find out what gets rewarded.
Test in Batches: Don't create one perfect piece of content. Create 20 imperfect pieces. Test different hooks, formats, and calls to action.
Find the Formula: See what gets traction? Double down. Kill what doesn't.
This isn't about going viral by accident. It’s about systematically creating enough surface area for luck to find you.
Want a real takeaway? Audit your time.
How much is spent building versus finding people to use what you've built?
If it's 90/10, you're on a path to failure. Flip it.
Conclusion
Building is easy. That’s why so many people do it.
But building what matters?
That requires a new operating system.
One that values listening over guessing. One that prizes a single, perfect experience over a dozen mediocre features. One that knows the real work starts after the launch. And one that obsesses over distribution as much as the product itself.
Maybe we all need a little less building, and a little more listening.
So, which trap are you stuck in right now?