Don't Know What to Sell: You Are Typical.
If you don't know what to sell, you are typical rather than unusual. For example, a Chicago Fed sample of five hundred and ninety founders found about half had no fully specified product. However, being typical is exactly what chapter 1 warned you about.
Half of active founders were still searching.
First, the sample was people actively trying to create a business at the time of the interview. In other words, they were not thinking about it, because they were doing it. Yet for about half, the money and effort spent had not produced a fully specified product. Instead, they were still working out what the thing actually was.
Where you sit if you don't know what to sell.
So be honest about which half you would have been in. In truth, you would not yet be in the sample at all. After all, these people had started, while you have not. Therefore, if half of them could not name the product, consider what that says about everyone still thinking.
Finding the product by doing is real.
However, this finding is not a criticism. In fact, plenty of good businesses get discovered by doing rather than by planning. As a result, you can find the thing while building the thing. Besides, nobody serious disputes it, and neither does the author.
Name what you would sell if you don't know what to sell.
First, write one sentence naming the product, the job it does, and who pays for it.
If you cannot finish that sentence, then mark it plainly as unknown instead of filling it with a vague word.
From the book.
That finding is not a criticism and I do not want it read as one, because plenty of good businesses get discovered by doing rather than by planning. You can find the thing while building the thing. Nobody serious disputes it, and neither do I.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 8: The job might be the problem, and a business might not be the answer
Questions about don't know what to sell.
Is it normal if I don't know what to sell?
Yes. In fact, about half of five hundred and ninety active founders could not fully specify their product.
Were those people only daydreaming?
No, because they were actively trying to create a business and already spending their own money.
Can you discover the product while building?
Yes, since plenty of good businesses get found by doing rather than by planning.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 8, “The job might be the problem, and a business might not be the answer”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Starting a Business After Unemployment: Escape Can Work.
- 02 Don't Know What to Sell: You Are Typical.
- 03 Motivations for Starting a Business: Escape vs Ambition.
- 04 Going Back to a Job After Self Employment: The Loop.
- 05 Marx Alienation of Labor: Does Owning Work Cure It.
- 06 Survivorship Bias in Entrepreneurship: The Empty Slot.
- 07 Do I Want a Business or Just to Quit: Two Columns.
- 08 Wrong Reasons to Start a Business: Why Motive Matters.