The Three Questions That Decide Whether Anyone Buys What You Built
Every founder who has ever pitched an idea to a stranger has heard some version of the same reassuring lie: “This is genuinely brilliant.” And here’s the uncomfortable part — they’re usually right. The product often is clever, well-engineered, and solves a real problem. That’s exactly why brilliance turns out to be such a poor predictor of what happens next. One commercialization specialist, who has spent years building markets for farmer-invented tools, put it bluntly: he gets pitched dozens of ideas a year, and every single one is brilliant. What separates the ones that sell from the ones that quietly disappear has almost nothing to do with the product itself.