Going deeper (for ages 14-18)

The customer-first move is not a Wright invention. It comes from a long tradition.

Paul Graham (Y Combinator) calls it "live in the future and build what's missing." Another way of saying: find a specific person and notice them straining against what already exists.

Eric Ries ("The Lean Startup") calls it "get out of the building." Your idea is wrong, and you only find out by talking to actual people.

Drew Houston built Dropbox because he kept forgetting his USB drive on the Boston commuter train. The customer was Drew Houston.

Patrick and John Collison built Stripe because they were two specific developers who wanted to accept payments on their own software and the existing options humiliated them with a 27-step signup. The customer was themselves and the 50 friends who had the same problem.

In every case the founder could name a person, describe the problem in painful detail, and point at a moment they witnessed the pain. That is the move you are practicing in Module 1.

This is also the move venture investors call "founder-market fit." More on that in Lesson 4.