Most Companies Are Busy Making Their Products

What If We Found Ourselves Building Something That Nobody Wanted? In That Case What Did It Matter If We Did It On Time And On Budget?

The Biggest Start-up Successes - From Henry Ford To Bill Gates To Mark Zuckerberg - Were Pioneered By People From Solidly Middle-class Backgrounds. These Founders Were Not Wealthy When They Began. They Were Hungry For Success, But Knew They Had A Solid Support System To Fall Back On If They Failed.

We Must Learn What Customers Really Want, Not What They Say They Want Or What We Think They Should Want.

Nowadays People Talk About Paypal's Founders As Prescient Geniuses Who Would Inevitably Change The World. It Was, However, Not So Obvious That Paypal Would Taste Its First Major Success By Helping People Sell Beanie Babies On Ebay. But They Had A Vision, A Hope, And The Perseverance To Try Multiple Iterations Until They Got It Right.

Entrepreneurs Can't Forecast Accurately, Because They Are Trying Something Fundamentally New. So They Will Often Be Laughably Behind Plan - And On The Brink Of Success.