It's all about talking to your users.

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·Nov 3, 2024

Most people in the world have the idea on how new startups are formed completely wrong. They think ideas of new products is something the founders come up with on a lazy Sunday or a late night coding session. You probably know it doesn't work this way. This scene, as you can see here, is a scene from The Social Network movie. It's a great movie, but they got a lot of things wrong on how Facebook actually got started.

This is Brian Chesky. Brian is the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. On the left side of the photo is Amal. Amal was the very first guest on Airbnb. They actually spent a weekend together in San Francisco when they'd be kind of washed.

You notice the difference between this photo and the previous photo? Well, this photo actually is a real photo. It includes a two-way conversation with a real customer. Great founders talk to future customers before they even have a product. In fact, the very best founders in the world learn directly from their users throughout the life of their company.

Let that sink in. If you have correctly identified who your users are, you should learn from them throughout the lifetime of your company.

Selina Tobaccowala at the Female Founders Conference 2016

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It's all about talking to your users.

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