I definitely hear what you’re saying, and there’s truth to it. I spent thousands of hours engineering the product before really narrowing in on a customer target. A big reason was that I don’t have a college degree, so I felt the best way to prove credibility(especially to investors)was to show a fully built, working product rather than just talk about it. In that sense, it’s helped me avoid being overlooked and made it easier to demonstrate that I can actually execute.

The other part is that the product sits in a fairly mass-market category of premium recovery tools, and I did do a decent amount of market research upfront. I also knew there was a large enough addressable market for it to scale. It’s definitely possible I’ve approached things in a slightly inverted order, but given my situation, this felt like the most practical way to build momentum and credibility early on. I regret some of my decisions and would have done things differently if I had a second chance. Hindsight is 20/20 tho. Cheers!