Should you be idea-first or audience-first? And what is the best approach, if there's one?

It's like the chicken and egg conundrum.

I can bring you points for one or the other side, but it feels like a never-ending debate.

For a long time, I thought you had to come up with an incredible idea to conquer the market, only to realize that my ideas weren't as good or that I couldn't build them.

Having ideas is the easy part. One day, you wake up, and inspiration strikes.

But do other people have the same problem?

The idea-first approach means focusing on the product and then searching for an audience.

"Build it, and they will come," they say.

I have done it with GestioneShop, a maintenance service for Shopify store owners. By defining the niche, audience, and other amenities, I tried to avoid the inevitable failure that the most seasoned makers, coaches, and entrepreneurs warned me about.

After over 80 hours on that side project, I still failed miserably.

Back then, it felt like the idea was too simple to be a head-turner.

The truth is I provided a solution to a problem that people were unwilling to pay money for.

That's what most indie makers out there do.

With a product-first approach, you are more likely to have a poor product-market fit and create something that only a few people want. (It's bizarre to note that 59% of people go for it.)

Been there, done that.

This failure made me wonder if there was a way to understand what is worth pursuing and what is not.

Luckily, I found the answer in The Minimalist Entrepreneur.

You don't need to build a massive audience to start with community.

To avoid a poor product-market fit and create something people might not want, you first dig down your target audience's problems.

"Instead of changing the world, you can change your community's world."

In his book, Sahil Lavingia shares that the community of like-minded designers he was part of faced a common challenge. Setting up a storefront to sell digital graphic files was difficult.

That's how Gumroad was born.

With this approach, you look after people before even having an idea. Talking to potential users and identifying pain points come long before working on a product.

And I did that, too.

Indie makers have problems getting seen and generating buzz around their products. So, in 2022, I created a mentorship program to help them stand out on Twitter and attract eyeballs to their launches.

I thought a tailored program was the best way to help people master product launches.

Yet it wouldn't have worked. Deep down, I knew that getting paid to coach them 1:1 wasn't my thing.

Customers, market, and pain were there.

What about founder-fit?

Tope Awotona, the founder of Calendly, talked about this. Among his failures, he once tried to sell grills without knowing anything about them—heck, he had never grilled and didn't want to.

The issue? His lack of passion.

And it leads us to the most underrated approach between the two parties.

The option you didn't think of before—building products for an audience of one.

An audience of one still means zeroing in on the audience's needs and working backward from there. Yet, this time, the audience is you—one person.

​Borrowing Rick Rubin's words, "When you make something truly for yourself, you're doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience… So many big movies are just not good. Because they're not made by a person who cares about it. They're being made by people who are trying to make something they think someone else is going to like."

It's a natural way to strike problems, ideas, and founder-fit at once.

My friend Luca Restagno has done it successfully a few times already. While growing his audience on Twitter, he wanted to automate part of his networking process but didn't find a solution, so he built an auto-DM welcome message app.

Hivoe grew to $3k MRR in less than a year because Luca knew exactly what his problem was and what he wanted to achieve. Gathering other people around was only a matter of time.

However, while solving your own problem, I'd always gauge the market/audience's reaction.

"Is it urgent enough for people to pay to solve it?"

Working on an idea without knowing if others have the same needs is a risky assumption.

For my app, I'll start reaching out to people once the MVP is ready.

But if you're even more cautious, set up a waiting list or launch a pre-sales deal to seek early validation.

Creating a product from the ground up with the highest potential for success can be quite challenging. Observing pain points and spotting topics is more accessible but still not that easy.

If working on products comes naturally to you and leveraging the audience's needs is difficult, give the audience of one a try.

Whatever you choose, make sure it's the one that suits you most.

And you? Which team are you on?

Stay healthy.

Mattia