Building a business vs. building an idea

Some wise words from a Business2Community blog:

 

Every business starts with an idea. However, the importance of the initial idea is over-inflated and over-emphasized. Your idea is just a starting point.

Some startups fail because they are not really businesses. The founder had an idea, and the idea was brought to fruition. Then, he/she tried to sign people up, and was unwavering in the focus and direction of the product.
That’s not building a business, it’s building an idea. If you’re going to create a sustainable business model, you need to iterate through customer feedback. Don’t get me wrong, the idea that your business is founded on is important, but the real discovery happens when you begin gathering customer feedback.

Feature Slashing to hit the market

So what does this all lead to? Launching sooner so you can listen sooner.
Feature creep is an almost inevitable part of building software. Everyone’s mind is racing in a startup. It’s impossible not to come up with more features, better features that would really put your product on the map. That’s not a bad thing, but these additions have their time and place, and that place is not your launch.

Removing features feels awful at first, but as you realize how much time you’re saving before launching, your perspective changes. “If we cut that we can launch a week sooner. If we cut this we can launch 2 weeks sooner.” The dialogue changes and excitement builds at the prospect of going live with your product.