All positive feedback

A common problem early in the startup process, in the market research phase, is too much positive feedback. Positive feedback feels great. Positive feedback is confirmation that your product or plan will work. Everyone loves hearing positive feedback and no one get mad at you for giving positive feedback.

Trouble is, Plan A rarely works and you need the negative feedback to fix those flaws.

I was watching a Smarter Every Day video when the above graph popped on the screen. Destin was talking about engineering and feedback loops, not entrepreneurship, but this simply graph tells a relevant story for startups.

The horizontal axis is time. Interpret the vertical axis as 1.0 being product-market fit, 0.0 a product that no customers want to buy, and 2.0 as a flood of customer demand but no product to sell. Your job as entrepreneur is to balance the extremes, creating a product that customers not only want, but will pay you enough to make a profit.

Without collecting and analyzing negative feedback, you’ll never get it right.

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