Focus on Real Users, Not Fantasy Scale
Your startup is likely dying from a lack of users, not a lack of scale. It's essential to build something that someone actually needs.
Stop building for your first million users when you don't have 10
A founder was advised to fire their CTO, who wanted to build infrastructure for 115 simultaneous users, despite having no users, including the founder's mom. This requirement translates to roughly 662,400 daily active users or nearly 20 million monthly users.
- Zero wireframes were created.
- There was no evidence that anyone wanted the product.
- The focus was on "architectural astronaut engineering" rather than real user needs.
A conversation with the founder and CTO highlighted the misplaced priorities: "My CTO says we need enterprise-grade infrastructure" and "Must handle massive scale from launch."
Author's summary: Build for real users, not fantasy scale.