Emmett Shear Quotes

Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is easier. Don't create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market - define your customers - then find or develop a product for them.

You only get points when you make something the market wants. So if you work really hard on the wrong things, no one will care.

What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don't do that, it won't matter how clever your business model is.

If you're an entrepreneur and you're starting a company, I think the first thing you do is you go and talk to a bunch of people. But then the next thing you probably should do is figure out if there's a broader demand than just people you know. That's where I think SurveyMonkey is pretty valuable to people.

Every startup should address a real and demonstrated need in the world - if you build a solution to a problem lots of people have, it's so easy to sell your product to the world.

I think, when I see entrepreneurs, they tend to talk about the market and the industry - which is obviously very important, but the most important thing is you're product. What are you selling? And does it really have product-market fit?

I don't understand how you can have product-market fit and not a lot of people wanting your product. The two go hand-in-hand.

A successful business must have a sound knowledge of its market and work on how its product or service will be different, stand out and improve people's lives. If you can ensure it responds to a real need in the market place, your business can punch well above its weight.

You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.

One of the top causes of startup death - right after cofounder problems - is building something no one wants.

You have to understand who your customer is and her motivations and marry it to what's happening in the outside world.

The problem with entrepreneurship is we are often working really hard producing high quality products that no-one wants. The creation of stuff is not valued.

Get your product in front of actual, living, breathing strangers. Your college roommate's approval does not mean there's market demand.

Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.

We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market and what kind of product you should build.

When you let travelers vote with their clicks, and you put that at the center of your decision-making, you build the product they want, and ultimately, their business will follow.

The goal of a private company is, first, zero to one: Get past the product-market fit; figure out whether people actually care about what you're trying to build and someone will pay you money for that. That's the zero to one problem.

Too many bar owners built a bar for themselves... when they should have built what their market and demographic demands!

Products are sold because they solve a problem or fill a need. Understanding problems and needs involves understanding customers and what makes them tick.

Customer discovery is the process of translating a founder's vision for the company into hypotheses about each component of the business model and creating a set of experiments to test each hypothesis.

Value Proposition Design is a 'must have' for anyone creating a new venture. It captures the core issues around understanding and finding customer problems and designing and validating potential solutions.

First and deadliest of all is a founder's unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them.

Certainly in business terms, considering how thriving the market is. Understanding what people want is essential. We have a team on the ground whose job it is to keep tabs on what's good, whether it's a tapas bar in Barcelona, or an amazing fish and chip shop in Yorkshire.

... the thing we see wrong with YC apps most frequently, is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first.