The fallacy of "focusing on fundraising"

We observe too many early start-ups today needlessly blocking themselves from product building, validation, and early sales. Too often founders follow the herd - "focused on fundraising" - when their focus ought to be on the problem they are seeking to solve. Time spent with customers and design partners will be the highest ROI for these founders, yet because they see confetti from early funding announcements on Linkedin and compare themselves to others, they stall their own traction.If your founding team can't put heads down and build an ugly duck MVP on sweat equity, using all the resources available these days, your chances of succeeding long term in this realm are slim to none.Success here is marked by an obsession with the problem and talking to customers, developing a feedback loop that enables fast iteration. Being open to learn and to fail, making mini experiments and then listening to the response. Understanding what does not work and why shows a deeper grasp on the problem.All this is not to shun pre-revenue (even pre-product) fundraising. Genuinely think its great that some investors cut these early checks and actually manage to drive good returns for LPs. I just don't think founders need to curtail their journey to fit an investor thesis at this stage. The money that speaks loudest is from your customer's pocket because its a loud, distinct sound on that metal detector that you picked up on something real (keep digging!)Let's normalize "bootstrapping" to early revenue. Also acknowledge that the nature of some technology products do require significant funding which the approach advocated for above is just not feasible.

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