I was reading this morning a typical example of a software geek (in his own words) that spent years building a huge product that maybe nobody needs (or better said, that nobody would pay for).
This is a classic mistake that I don’t really understand. Why would you start working on a product without thinking through 1 – if somebody needs it and 2- this somebody would pay for it under a business model that makes sense to you ? Of course, this doesn’t mean you cannot change the business model at any time (there are several good examples, being Flickr one of the most well-known ones) and you can just be plain wrong with your expectations and fail but still, a commercialization strategy should be on the top of your to-do list when starting a new product (even considering following a pretotyping strategy, but this deserves another post on its own).
I´m afraid I have no advice for the guy in the post linked above other than start again doing the things in the right order next time. Try not to make the same mistake!
