It's all bets, all the way down
A useful paradigm in software is to imagine it as a series of bets. The more you understand the software being written and the underlying business, the better your odds. But you're still betting. In the game of software, a bad bet can spell the end of a company. Less dramatically, at a minimum, it can certainly waste a lot of time and money. So no matter what you do, if you're working with software—you're a betting man/woman.
So how do you make better bets?
My favorite strategy: Don't bet until you've already been paid.
Don't risk building custom software until people have already paid for a result and you've been able to replicate it more than once. We’re talking about establishing true Product-market fit.
As Rob Snyder brilliantly put it: Product-market fit is just the ability to repeat a case study.
Quite frankly, that's the best way I've heard anyone position that idea. Rob’s explanation strikes at the issue’s core, which is that you need to have an identified problem that you've been able to solve well, and repeatedly before you're ready to translate it to code.
🔑 Key Takeaways
All business is a gamble, but some ideas and avenues are riskier than others.
You can control your risk by understanding your problem deeply.
Product-market fit is the ability to repeat a case study.