Decades ago, when I sat in front of investors to sell my new idea, the first question was: why won't Microsoft just do it itself?
I have to explain the Microsoft question, or any other giant in the field, because today it sounds a bit funny. The conception back then was that whoever gets to market first is king, and the more technological power a company has, the better its chances of success. The challenge of making an idea succeed was seen as a technological one, not a market one.
A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since. To begin with, the giant companies are no longer seen as competitors but as potential acquirers. There are almost no technological challenges left in development, and in most cases vibe coding does the job quite well. And most important, in my opinion, it doesn't matter at all who gets to market first. I know many cases of companies that came to market first and failed, while someone launched the exact same product a few years later and succeeded. Beyond that, you won't find the words "innovative" or "first to market" on product landing pages anymore. They stopped selling a long time ago, and they sound even a bit ridiculous.
It's a bit like the story of the tortoise and the hare. After a year, both can reach the same place. One gets there product first, market later, with a handful of users. The other gets there market first, product later, with a crowd.
It's a bit like a conversation between two colleagues. One holds a senior position at a company and barely finished high school. The other finished a master's degree with honors and still works as an economist in the public sector. Who cares what your background is? What matters is the test of results. Slogans and degrees no longer matter.
So if being first to market doesn't matter, why is everyone rushing to release their product as fast as possible? The answer is simple: because they can. And that is exactly the market failure. Many entrepreneurs take an immature idea and turn it into an app within a few months. And now what? They need to bring in customers. Some have read that they also need user feedback, so they write posts, present the app and ask for feedback. The answers, if any, are along the lines of "nice," "cool" and the like. Feedback like this isn't useful. It's even harmful, because the entrepreneur becomes convinced he is doing everything right. Then, a year after launch, he discovers that he had more customers at the beginning than he has now.
What happened here? At first, with a lot of work on social media, he managed to bring in the first 100. He got some of the readers excited. They signed up, didn't really use the app, and left. And then there is no user growth and no loyalty, and the entrepreneur doesn't even know why.
Today the founder's challenge has changed. Building a product is no longer the hard part. The hard part is knowing whether it has a market, and why users stay. StartZig was built to adapt to this challenge: a community of founders answers structured questions about the idea, the features and the business model, the quality of the answers is checked to filter out noise, and AI-powered analysis surfaces conclusions and suggests what to explore next.
Joining is free: https://www.startzig.com
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