I wrote this back in 2021. I was thinking about where I'd invest significant time and effort.
I have a strong preference for building products. But I have a weakness — marketing and sales. I used to dismiss them as inferior to engineering work.
That dismissal stems from an engineering-centric mindset that undervalues humanistic skills like storytelling and trust-building. But the truth is: we live by trust, by telling stories. These qualities cannot be reduced to quantifiable metrics.
Successful product adoption requires people to trust the creator enough to purchase what they've built.
Trust is evolutionary
Our ancestors lived in small villages. Human behavior was shaped around trust and personal relationships. People befriend those they trust, buy from friends, and marry into trusted circles.
Kevin Kelly's concept of "1,000 true fans" captures this perfectly. Bootstrapped, non-VC ventures require earning initial small groups of loyal supporters — progressing from 10 to 100 to 1,000 fans through localized, incremental wins.
No VC
I have a firm stance against the venture capital model. I prefer to build ventures using personal capital, the same way my grandfather did.