I’m starting to feel like outcomes are decided by structure, not ideas
Lately, I’ve been building a lot of small products.
And it always starts the same way.
“This might work.”
So I jump in.
Add features, shape the product, ship it.
But the results are also… kind of the same.
Either:
no real traction,
some users but no revenue,
or it just stalls somewhere in between
At first, I thought it was my execution.
Or maybe the idea just wasn’t good enough.
So I kept trying different things.
But after doing this multiple times,
I started noticing a pattern.
It didn’t feel like the product failed.
It felt like the direction was already decided from the beginning.
Especially when
I didn’t have a clear answer to
“How does this actually make money?”
Those projects almost always ended the same way.
So recently, I changed my approach.
Instead of starting with the idea,
I start with the revenue structure.
If I can’t see how money is generated,
I don’t build it.
If I can,
I reshape the idea to fit that structure first.
Since doing this,
I’ve been building less.
But making decisions a lot faster.
Still experimenting,
but it feels way more stable than before.
Curious if anyone else has noticed something similar?
Have noticed something similar, we came to very different conclusions. The problem I saw (after chatting w almost 30 IHs) is that people don't know how to talk customers. I believe revenue will come if you know how to look for real pain that people are experiencing. Love how you're holding back on the building though, IMHO people dive into the build way too fast because its more known and instantly gratifying - all you have to do is convince yourself that what you're doing is useful - the evidence required to make that leap is usually small to nothing, and we convince ourselves that what we're doing is worthwhile. happy to talk more if you're down as I think about this stuff a lot.