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Hi ,

After decades of leading marketing for all types of incredible technology companies, I've witnessed some pretty sad stories that all tech founders can learn from.

If you want to build a powerful company that goes on to improve the lives of millions of people - and I know you do - then you will need to learn these lessons at some point in your journey. Let me save you some time, heartache, and money!

After all, I want my hindsight to be your path forward.

Here are some of the hardest lessons I’ve seen play out over and over:

Monetize fast and build from there

So many of my customers have come to me with fully-built products with zero users. 

I’m not talking about just small startups either, I’m talking about Fortune 10 brands who’ve come to me with fully built and tangible products that had exactly no users whatsoever.

We’re talking millions spent in R&D, with nothing but loss to show for it…

After building brand awareness strategies for dozens of products in this position, one truth emerges.

If you haven’t validated market-fit - And by that I mean, if you haven’t established clear evidence that: 

… you have a rock solid target market full of real people who will actually spend real money for your solution to their problem

… that at least a handful of these people believe in you and your vision enough to make a purchase from you (or at least give you their credit card details

If you don’t have these two things knocked out FIRST.

Everything you build before that is peril.

Take Google Glass vs Dropbox as an example

❌ Google Glass (Failure) Google Glass was a cutting-edge product with no market validation. It was a fully built product that had an unclear audience and zero demand at scale. Google spent millions in R&D, but the lack of real paying users before launch meant that they were essentially building in a vacuum. The product failed to resonate with consumers and was ultimately discontinued.

✅ Dropbox (Success) Before writing a single line of code for their actual product, Dropbox validated demand with a simple landing page and an explainer video. The video drove massive signups, proving that people were willing to pay for cloud-based file storage. Only after seeing that demand did they build the product.

📌 Takeaway: Instead of spending years in R&D without revenue, founders should test the market first, even with a concierge MVP (manual processes that simulate a product), to validate demand before building at scale.

REALLY - you’d be better off offering a service (that acts as a proxy to the product you have in mind) so that you can at least have real customers and customer feedback to build your solution around.

Market-validation is the foundation upon which each and every solution you offer MUST be built, because none of the bells and whistles will matter if no one wants or needs what you’ve got.

Great marketing can’t fix a bad product

Great marketing can’t fix a bad product. There I said it.

In many such cases, I can work some magic to reverse engineer buyers for a problem that their product solves. 

We can back into market-validation if you will..

But if the product doesn’t actually deliver in the ways that are needed to solve the user’s problem, no amount of marketing can fix that.

Take Juicero vs Slack as a solid example of this

​​❌ Juicero (Failure) Juicero, a startup that raised $120M, built a sleek, high-tech juicer that turned out to be completely unnecessary—users could squeeze the juice packets with their hands instead. The company had flashy branding and high-budget marketing, but the product itself didn't solve a real problem. The startup shut down in less than two years.

✅ Slack (Success) Slack didn’t start with big marketing budgets or paid traffic. Instead, they tested the product with a small group of real users, iterated based on feedback, and let word-of-mouth drive growth. The result? A product that genuinely solved communication challenges for teams, one that grew into a billion-dollar company.

📌 Takeaway: Marketing can amplify a great product, but it can’t save a bad one. If the product doesn’t deliver on its promise, even the best branding won’t create long-term success.

Once you’ve validated a market, make sure you validate that the product is fit for use before turning on the ads traffic.

Anything less than that is a disaster waiting to happen.

Clarify your vision first, before building

Let’s face it - tech founders are BRILLIANT, in most cases…

They’ve got knowledge and skills that command top-tier rates at the most powerful companies on the planet.

It’s natural for someone in that position to think that a highly-paid skillset would directly transfer to a lucrative business if brought to the open market…

And if you’ve got a service-based company, then yeah. You can sort of pull that off, in most cases.

But if you want to build a solution that truly scales to elevate the lives of millions of people on Earth; taking a skills-first approach will NEVER get you there.

Whether you’re selling products or services, the same truth applies:

Your vision for the impact you want to make on the lives of people you touch is the bedrock of all future growth.

To lead a company for years or decades?

To get people to buy from you and to send their friends?

That requires you to build and show up from a place of impact and vision.

A great example of this is Segway vs Tesla.

❌ Segway (Failure) The Segway was a technical marvel designed by an engineering genius—but the vision was misaligned with reality. The founder believed it would replace walking and transform urban transportation, but they didn’t consider real-world use cases. As a result, it was expensive, impractical, and - it failed commercially.

✅ Tesla (Success) Elon Musk didn’t start Tesla by building the most affordable electric car. Instead, the vision was clear: accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Tesla started with high-end Roadsters to fund research, validated demand, and slowly scaled down to mass-market vehicles. The company is now worth hundreds of billions.

📌 Takeaway: Vision leads product, not the other way around. If founders don’t define their long-term impact before building, they risk creating something that’s technically impressive but commercially irrelevant.

So yes, your technical expertise does give you an unfair advantage! 

But if you want to really leverage your expertise to build a company of lasting impact, then you have to start first from your vision and then build a solution that can make that vision a reality, at scale.

Can you relate to any of the above lessons?

I don’t want you to waste too much time putting the cart before the horse (as we all can do)... so I really do hope that this email has been helpful.

I currently have space in my calendar for taking on maybe 1 or 2 additional advisory clients. 

If you’d like to have a conversation about where you’re at with your growth and how we could work together to get 10x better results from the incredible foundation you’ve already put into place, I’m here for that.

Simply reply to this email to start a direct chat with me, or book a time for a clarity call here so we can have a purely strategic, pitch-free conversation about how we could get your solution into the hands of lots more customers!

Otherwise, hit reply and let me know - what are some 3 hard lessons that you have learned? 

Have a great week ahead. Stay amazing.

All the best,

Lillian Pierson, P.E.

Author, The Data & AI Imperative
Fractional CMO & Founder, Data-Mania

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