Forget ROI, Get Returns Before Investment

You've been taught backwards. The entire industry has you obsessing over products and features while ignoring the only thing that matters: will anyone actually pay for this?

The product-first mindset has created a graveyard of beautiful, useless solutions and shattered dreams. Months crafting perfect features for problems people claim they have but won't pay to solve. Teams burning through resources building things the market will reject in minutes. All because someone convinced you that great products always win.

They don't.

And it might cost you time and money you'll never get back.

Products For Nothing?

Here's what product-obsessed teams miss: your brilliant idea isn't special until customers prove it is. But here's the opportunity - market thinking gets you to revenue faster, cheaper, and without needing investment at all.

Start with demand, not supply. Test market appetite before building anything. Understand your buyers - who are often completely different from your users. Know your competitors and how you'll cut through the noise they've created.

Marketing and product working together from day one, not as an afterthought when you've perfected your creation. If you can't get someone to hand over their credit card for it, move to another idea.

Market Thinking is a better obsession

Market thinking means business momentum from the start. Real customers. Actual revenue. Validated demand driving every product decision. You're not gambling on hypotheses anymore - you're responding to proven market signals.

The tools exist to test, validate, and iterate in real-time for almost nothing. The only expensive mistake now is falling in love with your  ideas instead of your customers' problems.

The future belongs to those who build what people will actually buy. You just might have to kill some darlings along the way.

Not to worry. Just start solving problems people pay for.