Entrepreneurs, don’t blindly fall in love with your product ideas

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Swati is a TIA Star Contributor and publishes high-value content that serves the Asian tech community. Read more from TIA Star Contributors here.

I was consulting for an education company when I met this newbie entrepreneur-cum-CEO who was working on an edtech platform. As part of my work, I had to spend some time trying to understand what they had done so far.

What I learned was that they were building a “Taj Mahal,” a product they seemed to have fallen in love with. And while many “users” came around, they had no paying customers in an entire year. Some lucky entrepreneur that was.

My conversation with one of their key team members went like this:

Me: What is the business plan?

Team member: We are building it.

Me: How will you monetize this?

Team member: As of now, it is free.

Me: Where is the product roadmap?

Team member: It is discussed. There is no formal document.

Me: But aren’t there many such learning management systems out there? What is so unique about this?

No answer.

The next day, I got a call from the entrepreneur telling me not to interact with the team in his absence.