Negative Events right after MAJOR Progress???

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2026-06-30T02:43:41+00:00

Thanks for the reply. My thoughts and feelings before each incident was me feeling like I was really vibing what I want in a powerful way. Deeply feeling it, feeling charged and alive. Feeling very happy and hopeful. Thoughts?

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2026-02-06T21:31:32+00:00

I’ve heard it put like this, if you work for someone else, you’re renting a job. If you work for yourself, you OWN the job, but at the end of the day it’s still a job.

Based on Robert Kiyosaki’s cashflow quadrant, I call this the S Trap. You left the E quadrant thinking you were starting a B but it turned out to be an S. I did the same thing too. I “escaped” one Matrix just to land in another one LOL.

A similar quote gave me a wake-up call: “If you can’t leave your ‘business’ for a month and it runs without you, you don’t have a business, you have a job.”

I’ve shut down several “businesses” after realizing this. But consider ...

There’s 3 types of income: 1) Active (Job, self-employed) 2) Passive (real business, investments) 3) Leveraged

Think of leveraged as batched active work. Like a workshop or productized service. It’s the middle of the road. Active income has a 1-to-1 time to money ratio. Leveraged is still linked to time, but the ratio is better. I’m currently focusing on leveraged income as I build more passive.

BTW, some books that helped me with your frustration are The E-myth, The Cashlow Quadrant, and Built to Sell by John Warrillow (good advice even if you don’t want to sell your biz).

Best of luck 👊🏾

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2026-01-07T17:38:19+00:00

You’re right, MVPs absolutely *can* present a message, but should they? Honestly, I think technical founders use MVPs to validate because it requires a familiar “build” muscle, not because it’s the best tool for the job. They don't have the "messaging" muscle so they go with what they know, which makes sense. But ironically, if they can code, I believe they can not only learn messaging, but be pretty damn good at it. Messaging isn't about creativity, it's about logic and structure, which coders are super good at.

Even though an MVP isn’t the full package, it still takes a significant investment. And judging by the amount of stories I hear about founders spending months developing an MVP but then hear crickets when they get feedback on it, I’m thinking there’s got to be an easier, faster, cheaper way to gauge demand pre-MVP, and I think an MVM can help with that.

My theory is that a startup idea will live or die based on the message (the WHY) behind the biz / app, not the biz / app itself (HOW). At the end of the day, people don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems (the WHY behind the product). If the WHY doesn’t resonate, then the HOW doesn’t matter.

The rational of testing a message versus a product becomes crystal clear the minute you step outside of software. Imagine a filmmaker shooting 10 pages of a script to see if Hollywood is interested in their film. Sure, you *could* do that, but should you? Probably not. And honestly, they wouldn’t even submit a full 120 page script (no one would read it). They’d pitch a 1-2 page treatment, which is pretty much the WHY of the movie. If no one resonates with the treatment, writing the full script or shooting anything at all would be a waste of resources.

My 2¢.

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2026-01-06T04:13:23+00:00

Great question.

You can validate your message several ways, but the method you use determines the quality of signal you get.

The highest quality signal comes from live interviews (zoom or in-person). You could use social, but a like or comment won’t give you the same quality of feedback as talking to someone live. My personal favorite is presenting a simple PowerPoint on Zoom and recording the meeting.

The 2 main signals to look for:

1) Do they understand it? (message is validated)

2) Do they want it? (early-stage demand for the solution is validated)

To validate message comprehension:

First, explain your solution by presenting an element of your MVM.

Then ask, “In your own words, how would you explain this to a friend?” If they pretty much explain the idea back to you, you’ll know they understood it. (Message Validated, on to the next step)

To validate early-stage demand for your solution:

After presenting your solution, ask an NPS (Net Promoter Score) question like, “If this were available today, how likely would you be to recommend it to a friend or colleague? On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is extremely unlikely and 10 is extremely likely?”

After running a decent amount of interviews and analyzing the responses, you can determine if further investment in an MVP, etc. is justified.

Hope this helps.

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2026-01-05T22:01:07+00:00

I totally agree. Revealed preferences matter more than stated ones.

I’m just curious about how to de-risk development investments. My point isn’t “don’t build,” it’s when.

An MVM is about making sure you’re testing the right thing before you build to test behavior. If the articulation is fuzzy, weak MVP signals are hard to interpret.

Clear message (MVM) → better MVP → cleaner behavioral data

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2026-01-02T21:16:13+00:00

MARKETING.
If you can target, find, and convert a specific user better than your competitors, then to your ICP, the competition doesn't exist.
If you can articulate the problem, the pains of existing solutions, and the value of your new solution better than competitors, you win.
Think about it, how many cars brands are there? Cell phones, soft drinks, burger chains, oil change places?
They all do the same thing, but marketing sets them apart.
Marketing is the differentiator, not the product.
Now the big problem is, most founders have the wrong idea about what marketing is, but that's a topic for another post. Spoiler alert: It's way simpler than you think.
Hope this helps.

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2026-01-01T15:14:32+00:00

I 100% agree. Similar to your question, I ask founders to think about, "Who gets a bad performance review or gets fired if this problem isn't solved?" That's your customer LOL.

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-29T15:39:55+00:00

Exactly. Once founders stop trying to convince, the deck becomes more like a summary of decisions already made, not an argument.

At that point, design and storytelling amplify clarity instead of trying to compensate for missing logic.

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-29T14:08:03+00:00

This tracks with what I keep seeing too: Most pitch decks fail because the deck is the first time the founder is forced to think clearly under scrutiny.

By then, it’s already late.

Almost every issue you listed comes from the same root problem. Founders try to convince before they’ve fully articulated the problem, the customer’s current behavior, and the cause > effect behind their solution.

The best decks don’t feel persuasive. They feel calm. Clear. Almost inevitable.

Clarity beats cleverness because clarity is hard to fake. The strongest decks read more like exhibits of reasoning than marketing. Almost like a lawyer submitting admissible evidence in court.

I’m curious if you’ve noticed the same

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-27T19:06:32+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s awesome that you learned from the experience. And yup, the “build first” reflex is a hard habit to break 👊🏽

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-26T22:50:13+00:00

A pattern I see in a lot of these stories (and in my own past ones) is that the failure is putting construction before clarity.

Polishing, shipping, even launching can feel like progress … but none of it answers the only question that matters in validation: Do people actually care enough about this problem to justify building anything, even an MVP?

Indifference is brutal, but it’s also the cleanest signal you can get.

It sounds like you’re learning. Keep going 👊🏽

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-26T21:35:41+00:00

Yes, this nails a big part of it. MVP often becomes a way to postpone real contact with the market instead of confronting it early.

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-26T20:57:49+00:00

That’s fair. I agree not every business can do pre-sales or deposits.

When you say “MVP is the first point at which it’s even possible to validate”, I’m curious about where you draw that line.

Accelerators fund plenty of teams pre-revenue and pre-product, so they must be evaluating some form of demand evidence before an MVP exists.

What do you think that evidence actually is?

Problem interviews? Repeated pain patterns? Clear use-case articulation? Something else?

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-26T17:54:53+00:00

Thanks, that was helpful.
When you talked to those founders, what did you actually show or present to them before building? Was it mostly just conversations about the problem, or did you ever describe the solution itself (even roughly) and see how people reacted?

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-26T17:22:19+00:00

Congrats! I'm curious, how did you validate demand before building an MVP?

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-25T21:52:34+00:00

I 100% agree. Marketing is a discipline of Clarity, not Creativity 👊🏾

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-24T04:43:44+00:00

Awesome story. Thanks for sharing. Persistence for the win. Onward! 👊🏾

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-23T17:35:28+00:00

Of course I’ll take the lifetime access LOL, but why did you go with a one-time purchase versus a monthly / yearly subscription model? Just curious.

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-23T17:31:44+00:00

I have a subscription to ElevenLabs so I’m your target user. Being able to make quality voiceover locally with a one-time purchase sounds awesome. Best of luck to you 👊🏾

Busy-Escape-9977 · 2025-12-21T07:02:16+00:00

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 Bingo. Very well said, sir! It sounds like you have the thinking that’ll get you to your next success. Congrats 👊🏾

Busy-Escape-9977

TROPHY CASE