Attention is scarce and there are already lots of good alternatives for almost any product idea. You better be good at sales and marketing if you want to cut thru the noise. A good product is not good enough.
Most startups don’t need press - unless you are asocial media app, chances are customers won’t pay simply because TechCrunch or CNN mentions you. They pay to get their problems solved.
1. If the idea is any good, you‘ll quickly encounter others who are better funded and need to execute extremely well. „Build it and they will come“ has worked for the tiniest minority or orgs I‘ve worked with and for, it certainly hasn‘t for us.
2. If your original idea is well researched and partially proven or already sold before building, why pivot? We didn‘t regret to sink a tenth of our initial invest into a great domain and brand.
3. True that. If you can‘t put your business model into a one sentence elevator pitch that includes a real-world problem and its solution that someone will actually pay for, din‘t even start…
I would respectfully disagree with this.
There are a few startups (e.g. Facebook), whose market timing is so perfect, that it's a sure-fire hit from the start.
But I have known so many companies that had founders struggling to make sales, as their timing was off. Then some market shift occurs, and what once was hard becomes easy.
COVID is a great example of something which induces a seismic shift everywhere. Remote work companies for example, would have suddenly found sales an order of magnitude easier.
2. Expect your startup/business/product to morph into something else, and that you'll change names and domain names, maybe multiple times.
3. You need an origin story, especially if you want any press. It also helps to be good looking.