It depends more on your definition of "know." :)

Serious question: Isn't Rob originally a developer?

We outsource a lot of our development too, but outsourcing part (even if it's a large part) as a developer is very different than outsourcing all of it, or outsourcing the "core competency" of your product/business, or outsourcing all the code from day 1. Which I still find sketchy and predict will land a person in trouble if they are unable to work on their own product, just as I describe in the transcript!

As for Jason, I didn't know that, that's great. He does write that 40 promised, but only "20 actually did before launch." What I meant, in my terse way, was "presales to fund the development," which is what I understood Nathan to mean because of his only-$5k budget. Jason had some proof of concept in 20 people but that probably paid for just about nothing :) Or… he was able to get a significant pre-sale $$$ by reaching larger, institutional clients with his connections and track record! Which isn't something a bootstrapper starting out should count on.

Thanks for clarifying!

In the comments of his post, Jason wrote:

"Customers are bad about figuring out features, but good about explaining their pain or what they'd like solved."

In your chat with Nathan, you said that people are not good at explaining or even noticing their pains. I guess your experience differs from Jason's in that respect. Mine is probably somewhere in the middle :-)

So, if your prospects are not aware of their pain, how do you sell them your solution?

I expect you have to educate them. It's probably unlikely that you just build something, unveil it, and they go "Of course I need this! Why didn't I think of it?! Silly me! Here's my money."

But then how long do you spend on educating them? Is this why you recommend info products? So that you don't waste time educating for free?

Or do you recommend doing landing page tests?

This is turning into an interview, so I'll stop here. I don't expect you to give away all the secrets you teach in your courses, but would appreciate anything you can share. Thanks!

We have to draw a line between "Customers" as in "Customer interviews" as in "People I want to learn about to maybe build something for who MIGHT become actual customers with money later" -- and actual customers, who are already paying you money.

It's easier to get actual information out of actual customers, because they have something concrete to start with (your existing product).

Speculating about potential problems with Customers™ of the first kind doesn't work so well.

I don't think any of my products were products people would have complained about to start with, but once we (yes!) educated them, they were excited.

Part of education means clearly showing the potential customer what pain they're in that they're currently ignoring. Most people block out daily pain & annoyances… even big ones. After all, if they haven't seen hope that it'll get better, why constantly be upset by it? Natural human coping mechanism. I think this is where big wins exist.

I agree with you that that's where the big wins exist. But, there also lies the eternal tarpit of dead products - email software, project management apps, to-do list apps, etc.