Your Tech is Not Your Business

“I want to build an app.” 

We hear it all the time, and (as you can imagine) we build lots of them.

There are two red flags we've noticed that indicate you might be jumping the gun on building technology.

Here they are:

🚩 If you have never delivered the service you’re trying to build

🚩 If you don’t have users to test your product

Here’s why each of these flags are a big deal:

You've never delivered the service you're trying to build 

Technology isn’t a silver bullet, nor is it a business in and of itself. Technology merely helps you scale your human process. So, if you’ve never delivered the service or completed the process manually that you’re trying to build with tech, how do you even know people want that service from you?

The way to avoid this flag is to build your business first. Get customers. Provide them with a service. Design your systems and processes, start using them, refine them, and then apply tech to them, once you have a clear picture of what you need to scale. 

The most successful entrepreneurs we know are applying technology to the manual roadblocks in their current process. When you take the time to understand how a process works manually, applying technology will merely make something that works, work faster.

If you don’t have customers to test your product

Not having a base of users to test your site/product/app on is a sign of a few things:

• You aren’t talking to your target market and trying to build a base of users

• Or the people you're talking to just aren’t interested in what you’re selling

If you aren’t talking to your target market and trying to build a base of users who are interested in what you're building, then you won’t be getting the vital feedback you need to build a product that is uniquely suited to their needs.

If the people you're talking to just aren’t interested in what you’re selling, then you either need to spend your energy find people who are or change your approach. This will save you from building expensive tech and still not having anyone to sell it to. 

The way to avoid this flag is to find people interested in your business who would be willing to test your product, or sell your product and deliver it manually to find those customers. These are the hard, but necessary parts of the business that will help you build better products that users will actually use.

Your tech is not your business

Both of these flags point to an underlying assumption that tech will be able to accomplish something for you that you aren’t doing otherwise. Or an assumption that if you build it, they will come. With the noise in our world, this is simply not the case. 

Technology won’t solve that problem you haven’t first solved. People won’t use a piece of tech just because it exists. Technology is a tool in your toolbox to scale your business, not the business itself.

• Finding customers

• Figuring out your customer needs

• Building something for those customers

• Helping that grow and scale over time

👆🏾 That is what makes a business.

Technology is a part of your business, and technology is a tool to scale your business.