There's also a fourth related mistake they make too:
Focusing on building instead of selling.
It's not just that you need to start selling your product before you make it to gauge demand, you also need to continue to sell your product and market it after it goes up too.
But that's not fun for many software engineers. It's not enjoyable setting up ads and deals with influencers and meeting with clients and working on SEO and what not. It's fun to sit in front of a computer writing code.
So we get a bunch of technically fancy projects with nice looking GitHub profiles and Hacker News showcase posts, all of which barely anyone actually uses. It doesn't help that for a certain percentage of developers (read, many people here), they seem to think selling or marketing something is inherently immoral in some way or another.
Focusing on building instead of selling.
It's not just that you need to start selling your product before you make it to gauge demand, you also need to continue to sell your product and market it after it goes up too.
But that's not fun for many software engineers. It's not enjoyable setting up ads and deals with influencers and meeting with clients and working on SEO and what not. It's fun to sit in front of a computer writing code.
So we get a bunch of technically fancy projects with nice looking GitHub profiles and Hacker News showcase posts, all of which barely anyone actually uses. It doesn't help that for a certain percentage of developers (read, many people here), they seem to think selling or marketing something is inherently immoral in some way or another.