
David Hirschfeld discusses navigating the startup world, highlighting the importance of understanding market needs and the Launch First approach. He discusses the challenges startups face, the significance of identifying early adopters, and the impact of AI on the industry. David promotes a problem-solving approach instead of focusing on products first. He encourages founders to connect with potential customers early to validate their ideas and adjust as needed.
The Launch First Methodology: A Step-by-Step Guide to Startup Success
1. Identify Your Early Adopter Niche: Don’t Just Guess, Validate!
Forget the detailed market research. David emphasizes the importance of pinpointing your ideal early adopter niche. This process requires carefully analyzing customer segments, identifying their pain points, and measuring the impact and cost of those issues.
2. Build a High-Fidelity Prototype: Sell the Vision, Not the Code
Create a prototype that highlights your product’s functionality and user experience, even if incomplete. This creates an illusion of completion, builds trust, and encourages pre-launch sales.
3. Launch Your Pre-Sale Campaign: Get Paid to Build Your Product
Before you invest in development, start selling your product. Offer high-value incentives, such as lifetime licenses or pre-implementation services, to attract early adopters and generate revenue. This not only validates your product-market fit but also provides funding for development.
4. Pivot Fast and Cheap: Embrace Failure as a Learning Opportunity
The Launch First methodology encourages rapid iterations and adjustments. If your pre-sale campaign doesn’t reach your goals, feel free to modify your prototype, marketing strategy, or target audience. This helps you quickly and cheaply identify if a product won’t succeed in the market, reducing investment risk.
Conclusion: Shift Your Mindset from Product to Problem
David Hirschfeld’s Launch First methodology challenges the traditional startup mindset. Instead of building the perfect product, prioritize understanding your customer’s needs and validating your product-market fit. By embracing a customer-centric approach, you can increase your chances of success and avoid the pitfalls of costly development cycles.
Transcript
[0:06–0:37] Neil: This episode is going to be really interesting if you are on the cusp of going it alone, if you’re thinking that next big software idea might just have legs, or if you’re in a startup or early stage organization or business and it just is not working, it’s not kind of working out as you expected, then my guest today, David Hirschfeld, is going to be able to cast a lot of, I guess, sort of opportunity in your direction, a lot of clarity, and hopefully cut through some of the mystique that goes on behind this whole idea of startups. David,
[0:37–0:42] David Hirschfeld: welcome to the show. Thanks, Neil, and thanks for having me on your show. I’m really looking
[0:42–1:15] Neil: forward to chatting with you today. Yeah, likewise, and I think for a lot of people, this is a really kind of hot topic because I know a lot of people get a little tired of, you know, doing the big commute, they get tired of kind of working for somebody else. And there are a lot of people who are about to take the leap. And whilst, you know, these opportunities for some people come once in a lifetime, I think for a lot of us, we’ve kind of played or toyed with the idea of taking that leap of faith and actually moving to creating a startup. And,
[1:15–1:36] Neil: or they have actually taken that leap and then realized it’s not as easy as you might first think. What is the state of play right now within kind of the startup field, these early stage organizations? Are they kind of feeling the pressure of the current economy and the uncertainties of political climate? How are things kind of playing out from your perspective?
[1:38–2:10] David Hirschfeld: Yeah, this is probably one of the best times. Oh, well, it’s the best of times. It’s the worst of times. It’s one of the best times to consider starting a software company because it’s much faster to develop products and there’s so much excitement around AI and all of the capabilities that it brings. But it’s also the worst of times because the state of the art is accelerating so
[2:10–2:43] David Hirschfeld: fast and so the idea that you can develop products quickly that is that business is or that capability is just increasing on a monthly basis in terms of what’s possible so if you have an idea for a startup in my mind you should rush to try to get started on building that product or at least on securing your customers in that market
[2:43–2:50] David Hirschfeld: because the market will change fairly quickly because of all the new capabilities.
[2:52–3:07] Neil: Yeah, interesting times, isn’t it, in so many ways. And I guess as soon as we start this conversation with the whole idea of speed to market, inevitably some people are going to be thinking, oh, well, that’s good, so I can cut some corners.
[3:07–3:17] Neil: I don’t have to worry about the old ways of setting up a business. I can just go for it. And, oh, yeah, my life’s going to be easy. It probably isn’t as simple as that, though, is it?
[3:17–3:22] Neil: A lot of the old business paradigms and methodologies have still got to apply, surely.
[3:23–3:38] David Hirschfeld: They do. It’s just compressed is all, but it’s not shortcuts. So, for example, you still have that product market fit. You still have to be able to identify the early adopter niche and confirm that they’ll pay for your product.
[3:39–3:52] David Hirschfeld: You still have to design and develop the product, and you have to develop one that people want to use and will continue to use once they start engaging with it. So none of that’s changed. I don’t know that any of that will ever change.
[3:53–4:09] David Hirschfeld: You have to have good business practices from a financial perspective. You have to make sure that you’ve got the money to go forward with your business, and you want to have enough so that if you have to pivot, you have enough cushion to be able to make those pivots.
[4:10–4:30] David Hirschfeld: And all startups have to pivot. It’s the one in a thousand, maybe, that gets it right the first time. Everybody else, including myself, don’t get it right the first time and have to figure out what the market really wants and where the real value opportunity is.

[4:31–4:48] David Hirschfeld: That’s kind of the whole approach that I created because I’ve watched so many startups fail. So I’ve spent the last, well, 35 years in software and I’ve had my own startups that I’ve been successful with, both successes and failures.
[4:49–4:59] David Hirschfeld: And then 17 years ago, I started Techies and I’ve worked with over 70 startups during that time. and a couple of them very successful, but the vast majority of them failed.
[5:00–5:15] David Hirschfeld: And they all fail for the same reason. They just wait way too long to start to sell their product, to generate revenue. And as a result, they don’t know that they don’t have product market fit for way too long.
[5:15–5:33] David Hirschfeld: And what they do is most startups, the classic approach is you develop, with your pitch, your design, you go out and you raise some money from, if you can, or you have your own money that you’ve saved for you from friends and family.
[5:33–6:12] David Hirschfeld: Usually you’re not going to be able to raise from venture capital in the very beginning stages unless you are a Stanford grad and you’re a PhD in AI or something just very exciting to people and you have some new theory that people believe is going to become some very big thing that’s the rare case right so the majority of us all of us humans have to go out and raise money from family and friends if we’re going to raise money if we don’t have our own money to start a software company and then um uh uh then we design and then we develop the product
[6:12–6:36] David Hirschfeld: and then put it out for beta testing, usually free betas because we’re trying to get feedback. And this is the classic approach. And it’s usually six months to a year for the first version, the MVP, minimum viable product, to get that out into beta and then another six months to a year, sometimes longer, before you feel like you’re ready to go to market.
[6:37–6:50] David Hirschfeld: And then you start to market your product only to find out that people won’t pay for it. Even the beta testers that you had won’t pay for it. Or they’re so few paying for it that you can’t make a viable business out of it.
[6:50–7:00] David Hirschfeld: And now, and the beta customers you had gave you feedback about what they wanted to see, but none of them committed to spending money with you if you made those changes.
[7:00–7:01] : So they’re taking you in the wrong direction.
[7:02–7:13] David Hirschfeld: This is just very classic. And 95% of software startups fall into this category. And then you have to pivot.
[7:13–7:25] David Hirschfeld: And now you’ve got a product you’ve developed, which costs a lot of money, and it’s expensive to now pivot, which means rewriting parts of your product. And that’s risky because once you pivot, then you have to go out and test it again to see if people will buy it.
[7:25–7:40] David Hirschfeld: So this is the three-, four-year cycle of just basically spiraling down and not having enough money to pivot enough times to finally find the product market pit before you end up just exiting the business.
[7:40–8:18] David Hirschfeld: this is why I created the launch first methodology because I realized there’s a better way of doing this. It’s harder up front, but it’s much easier once you find product market fit, which you can do in three or four months instead of three or four years. What we do is, and this isn’t a new concept um i don’t think other people have formalized it but it’s based on the lean startup ideas but taking it one step further and building the marketing engine your marketing stack doing
[8:18–8:52] David Hirschfeld: all the niche analysis understanding who that early adopter is what problem they need solved and what the how much they perceive that that problem impacts them and how much it costs two different numbers for that uh because of that problem how much they’re spending and so that you know if you talk to them about that problem because the perceived impact is really high they’re going to lean forward and say can you fix my problem because they really want it solved because they perceive that it really impacts them a lot and if the cost is high you know you can
[8:52–9:23] David Hirschfeld: charge a lot so when you know you’ve got an early adopter that has the highest possible quotients and those two factors you know your the chances are you found your early adopter as long as they have the authority to make the decisions quickly um uh then you have your likely early adopter and we go through a whole process to nail down who that is um and also to validate that you found the right person um and once we do that we’re also at the same time building what i call a
[9:23–9:33] David Hirschfeld: a high fidelity prototype, which is a very animated set of mock-ups. So when you show somebody, it looks like you’ve already built the product.
[9:33–9:49] David Hirschfeld: Even though you never lie to a potential client, you always tell them this is just a prototype, the actual product won’t be available for three to four months, and the first version won’t have all these features. As long as it’s realistic enough, they just don’t hear you saying that.
[9:49–10:01] David Hirschfeld: They make up a story in their head. well, they must have already developed the product and they’re just in QA. You never said that. And if they ask you, of course, you’re honest with them. No, this is not the product.
[10:01–10:11] David Hirschfeld: This is what you’ll get once we’ve built it and delivered the product that will look and behave this way, exactly like this. And this still doesn’t quite sink in.
[10:12–10:28] David Hirschfeld: And it’s important. It’s a critical success factor to doing this because you’re going to demo this and ask them to buy it in advance. with the idea that if they ask you the question, how do I know you can build this, then you cannot sell that person.
[10:28–10:40] David Hirschfeld: And they will never ask that question if the demo you show them looks like you’ve already built it and it’s realistic enough. They just trust that they will get the product because it looks like we’ve already built it.
[10:40–10:51] David Hirschfeld: So what we do is we go out to the market, we build our marketing funnel. That’s why it’s called Launch First. We do that before we develop the software. and then we go out and we start selling it.
[10:51–11:17] David Hirschfeld: We offer a really high-value sales opportunity for the client, like a lifetime license if they buy, you know, 18 months of the subscription in advance or pre-implementation if it’s a big healthcare-related system where implementation is 70% of the cost of the product or whatever that particular market’s high-value perception is.
[11:17–11:30] David Hirschfeld: And if the value is high enough and the problem you’re solving is big enough and costly enough, they will buy in enough numbers up front that you can prove you have a viable, that you have product market fit and you have a viable business.
[11:31–11:41] David Hirschfeld: And then you take the money that you’re getting from these sales and you use that to help fund development. And then you keep selling even while you’re developing the product. Just keep selling.
[11:41–11:55] David Hirschfeld: And there are different ways of launching a pre-launch sale. One would be where you say you’re not going to get the product for three to four months. Another is what I call a Fred Flintstone launch.
[11:55–12:22] David Hirschfeld: For any of you who don’t know who Fred Flintstone is, just look up Fred Flintstone driving his car YouTube videos. And basically this is a cartoon of a caveman It was big in the 70s 60s and 70s And there no motor of course in the car of a caveman so he has to spin his feet like this to get it going.
[12:22–12:45] David Hirschfeld: So we do what we call a French blintstone launch, which is we cobble together some workflows, and we start delivering the service immediately, you know, upon selling two or three or four clients so you know you’ve got product market, that you’re going to go that direction, and then we start running the service and servicing it manually without the aid of all the software you’re going to build.
[12:46–13:04] David Hirschfeld: They’re buying into the vision of what you’re giving them with all the software and the capabilities, but you’re delivering the value of that service right up front. And there are a lot of really successful examples of this that have happened over the last 10, 15 years, big companies that have done this really successfully.
[13:04–13:32] David Hirschfeld: uh so um and you’re learning how to operate your business while you’re building the software you just go at the sale slowly enough so that you can still handle the capacity until the software’s in place and can start to automate everything so that’s another way of doing a launch first type of launch anyway and the idea is let’s say nobody is buying the product in this pre-launch scenario which is taking you three months to get to, not two or three years.
[13:33–13:43] David Hirschfeld: Now we pivot, which is quick and easy because we’re pivoting a prototype, not software. They can pivot. We can change the workflows.
[13:43–13:58] David Hirschfeld: We can change the design in whatever way is necessary. We can change the marketing funnel because that’s simple and it’s focused on one niche, and go back out in two or three weeks and retest the scenario and do this two or three or four times.
[13:58–14:21] David Hirschfeld: And if after two or three or four times, you’re still not even close to what I call the viability barrier. That’s generating enough revenue from a high enough closing ratio that you can get a roughly three to one ratio between what you project your lifetime value is versus cost of acquisition of each customer.
[14:21–14:54] David Hirschfeld: if you can’t get anywhere near that you’re like a small fraction of one or no sales at all after several different attempts then it’s a healthy thing to say okay this is the wrong product for the wrong market or the wrong time or whatever it is and you fail fast and cheap and I can tell you failing fast and cheap for a product that just isn’t going to happen is like manna from heaven for anybody who’s gone through a three four five year hundreds of thousands or
[14:54–15:19] David Hirschfeld: millions of dollars of investment and then fail so the failing fast and cheap is a win as long as we’ve given it every ask every possible aspect maybe spent five or six months at this and without it this huge investment of building the software so um and then it’s time to go on to whatever, now you’re free to go on to the next thing, your marriage is still intact.

[15:21–15:56] David Hirschfeld: You know, all of the disaster that comes with the big failure, you’re not experiencing that other than some money and a little bit of ego, but you’re ready to take what you’ve learned, move on, and go to the next thing. So that’s the idea. But with Launch First, your chances of success are much higher because you’re doing this hard work up front. That’s what I call the hard, easy approach and you go through this very exhausted process to figure out who that early doctor niche is and do all the design and then go out and start asking for money which a lot of
[15:56–16:18] David Hirschfeld: founders find difficult to do asking for money from potential customers by putting the product out there and saying okay do i have a real business or not and a lot of founders want to just extend that time frame as long as possible before they actually go out and start asking customers for money. But to me it’s like that’s the most important thing you can do.
[16:19–16:22] David Hirschfeld: Just ask them for money and see if they’ll give it to you.
[16:23–16:52] Neil: Yeah, and I think that’s the key thing here, isn’t it? Because I can imagine, I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of this, David, is this whole thing about somebody has the next big idea, or at least they perceive they do. They get super passionate, emotionally attached to the idea, almost to the point where they can’t release it, they can’t let it go. It’s because whatever The world and the media and everybody tells me I’ve got to really believe in myself and believe in my product and strive to develop it.
[16:52–17:14] Neil: And we almost kind of talk ourselves down the wrong little bunny hole here, don’t we? Whereas actually, if we went back to what you’re saying here with this launch first methodology, it is back to pure, pure marketing, really, which is understanding the customer need, knowing the pain points, developing a solution towards that rather than product first.
[17:14–17:25] Neil: And that’s a really interesting angle, isn’t it, when it comes to software? Because often if, you know, you go to a layperson in the street and say to them, you know, what is the business going to be doing if they’re developing software?
[17:25–17:35] Neil: Well, it’s all about the technology. But actually what you’re saying is no, the technology is almost an afterthought here. It’s very much about the need and the market.
[17:36–17:38] Neil: It’s a real kind of switch of mindset, isn’t it?
[17:38–18:01] David Hirschfeld: What I find is that founders, the successful founders, which they’re few and far between, the successful founders are the ones who love the problem that they’re solving, and they love being in front of potential customers learning about their problems.
[18:02–18:25] David Hirschfeld: And the product, like you said, is an afterthought. I think it’s the natural conclusion of mitigating the problem. As founders who are in love with their product and believe, you know, and it’s all about the belief of what they’re building and the value it has, they fail almost every time unless they can break out of that.
[18:26–18:36] David Hirschfeld: They basically create sort of their own religion in their mind, their own church, the product, right? And then, of course, once you have faith, and it’s very hard to shift somebody off that.
[18:36–18:51] David Hirschfeld: So I spend a lot of time coaching founders on, you know, turn your belief into a clinical practice. You want to be very clinical in how you evaluate everything you do and focus on the problem, not on the product.
[18:52–19:06] David Hirschfeld: The product is just so what? If it’s a great product or not, who cares? But if it’s solving real problems, then that’s what you care about. And so shift into the focus on the problem.
[19:07–19:23] David Hirschfeld: And we do that. The methodology sort of forces that to happen because we do it. It’s a metrics-driven process. A lot of startup methodologies are very subjectively driven and very siloed.
[19:23–19:35] David Hirschfeld: Every step is a step in this process. And when the step is over and you have to decide is the step complete and is the step correctly done, and that’s why I say subjective.
[19:35–20:08] David Hirschfeld: And it’s siloed because once that step is done, you’re done and you move on to the next step in this process. And Launch First is not quite like that because Launch First requires a very sophisticated scoring system for each of the things that you’re doing so that you can so that you end up having a metrics that indicate which early adopt which niche is the one to focus on which is the early adopter even like discovery interviews we don’t do formal discovery interviews the way that most methodologies do
[20:08–20:40] David Hirschfeld: because i find that when you do discovery interviews you’re asking um you’re asking questions of stakeholders in different niches and you’re getting different feedback and you’re not correlating it properly and very often you’re asking the wrong kinds of questions because you’re asking about your product as opposed to both asking about the problems that they’re struggling with and how did they address those problems and why are they why are those problems such a big problem or not a big problem so what we do is we break it down
[20:40–21:07] David Hirschfeld: into a matrix where the across the top of the matrix is the all the different niches that uh somebody can uh potentially market their product to and and i have my own methodology for what makes a niche which i won’t go into here but um we want to know that’s really a niche right and then and some people think that they’ve got three niches end up having 30 niches when we finish the breakdown because you want them pretty tight.
[21:08–21:28] David Hirschfeld: And then we go down the other axis with problem statements. And by problem statements, I mean like root level problem, the problem that when you say that problem to a specific niche, they feel like their survival is at stake.
[21:28–21:49] David Hirschfeld: That’s the type of problems we’re looking for. that problem is painful and scary and they need it to disappear. And then we score that matrix, all of the intersections between the niches and all the problems to figure out who has the highest impact on one sheet and then on the second sheet, who has the highest cost.
[21:50–22:08] David Hirschfeld: And again, those are separate numbers because sometimes you’ll have a really high cost, but the perceived impact is not very high to a particular problem for one niche. and the converse can be true where they perceive the impact is really high, but the cost, it turns out, is very low.
[22:09–22:20] David Hirschfeld: And in the first case where the cost is high but the perception is low, it’s hard to get their attention because they don’t perceive that as being a big niche. So if you talk to them about that problem, they go, yeah, that’s a lot.
[22:20–22:37] David Hirschfeld: Then everybody deals with that. It’s not a big deal. Just built into the way we deal with things. So they’re not motivated to do anything about it, even though it’s a big cost factor. The other way, the other ones are really motivated to do something about it where the perceived impact is really high, but that you can’t charge them very much because the cost is very low.
[22:38–22:59] David Hirschfeld: And so that doesn’t make for a really good business foundation. So you’re looking for the niches that have the highest of those two correlations together. And then we do a lot of other things beyond that to figure out which of the top two or three niches that have those high correlations is the ideal first early adopter that you’re going to focus on.
[22:59–23:11] David Hirschfeld: Because you can only focus on one niche at a time. And I often say when you’re starting a company, in the software world especially, but in any company, as a CEO, that’s your number one job.
[23:11–23:23] David Hirschfeld: is who is your early adopter and how do you reach them and price your product properly. That’s the number one job of a founder, not building the product.
[23:25–23:39] Neil: Is there a danger then that kind of going down this route? I mean, you’ve got a convert here, David. I mean, I am totally, totally on board with the way that you’re describing this. I mean, this is, as you say, none from heaven when it comes to pure marketing philosophy.
[23:39–23:50] Neil: And I’m talking about strategic marketing, not marketing cons. And it just sounds absolutely ideal. But what happens, though, when somebody has the big dream? OK, I’m going to do this.
[23:50–24:03] Neil: I think I know what the software solution is, or I think I know what I might like to be developing. And then they go down this approach. They identify the early adopter. They identify those pain points that they can solve.
[24:03–24:33] Neil: but then the solution is something completely a million miles away from what they thought they were going to be developing as a business doesn’t that put them in a slightly awkward position because then do they have the choice could they then just go down the pure well I’m going to do it anyway or are you then kind of almost forced to find a way of solving that problem Because it could be a completely different mindset a completely different product or service that you identify going down this route couldn it
[24:33–24:45] David Hirschfeld: It could be. Oh, yeah. And I wouldn’t say it always is, but it often is different than what they thought. And sometimes it’s wildly different, just like what you were saying.
[24:45–24:59] David Hirschfeld: So the, you know, this has to do with the how healthy is your ego. So a founder with really healthy ego and recognizes that what they wanted to do wasn’t what the market needs and they ship.
[25:00–25:18] David Hirschfeld: Now, sometimes if it’s a passion project and maybe it’s at the last, you know, they want to bring something to the world because they think it’s important and needed. and that’s more important than the business itself, which sometimes it is and that’s valid, then they’ll go down that path anyway.
[25:18–25:28] David Hirschfeld: And then it doesn’t really matter whether they’re identifying the early adopter niche or not because they’re doing something that’s going to make the world a better place or whatever, right?
[25:28–25:54] David Hirschfeld: And then people, and they can’t sell enough to be viable. Some founders are in a position where they can afford to do that. That’s the pretty rare founder, right? But most of the time, if they, and it does happen where they just don’t really want to look at the reality and they just want to go down what they think the market needs because they have, it feels good and it’s fun to build this dream, right?
[25:54–26:05] David Hirschfeld: And then they fail. So that’s choices that founders get to make, right? That’s why we’re founders. You get to make the wrong choice. You’re, you know, you’re empowered to make the wrong choice.
[26:05–26:19] David Hirschfeld: And if you make enough wrong choices, one of them will be right. If you have the wherewithal to survive all those wrong choices and get to the right choice, then you’ll find a path to success as well.
[26:20–26:31] David Hirschfeld: And some founders, I mean, that’s how historically most founders have found their way to a successful path. They get investment. They get people excited. They’re very charismatic.
[26:31–26:46] David Hirschfeld: They’re able to, once they launch their product, they’re able to draw investment in. and they are able to survive not, you know, the market shifts and their shifts in their product in the market until they find a path that they can start to build on.
[26:48–26:55] David Hirschfeld: That’s just the hardest, that’s just the hard way to do it, hard and expensive way to do it though. There are easier ways to do it.
[26:56–27:30] Neil: And I guess there’s a time factor as well, isn’t there? Because, you know, everybody says it and all the great, you know, business books always say that, you know, you have to be failing to really understand what success is. And, you know, I can certainly say not everything that I’ve done, you know, has proved to be, you know, fruitful or successful. So I kind of get that. And that certainly sounds like you’ve been there as well, David. But the point is, I guess, when kind of there is the option to, and you’ve used the word a couple of times already, pivot from maybe that trajectory that you believed you were going
[27:30–27:41] Neil: and beyond. Pivoting, I guess, if you’ve got the right sort of infrastructure, maybe you’ve got a little bit of investment left, you’ve got a hope and you’ve still got some energy and some passion,
[27:41–28:17] David Hirschfeld: pivoting could be quite a good thing, couldn’t it? Oh, yeah. I mean, if you’re not on a path, a path to build a viable business and you’ve got a product with a viable market that you’ve proven you’ve got product market that you have to pivot because you otherwise you’re you’re spending money you know you’re in the red forever um and unless you have endless financial resources then you’re going to end up one day having you know having spent it all and having to close shop
[28:17–28:27] David Hirschfeld: so pivoting is a even if you find product market fit early on you still will probably end up having to make many pivots in your business.
[28:28–28:42] David Hirschfeld: They just won’t necessarily be complete pivots. They may even be complete pivots if it turns out a competitor comes along once you get started and changes the market under your feet.
[28:42–28:55] David Hirschfeld: That’s rare that that happens after you’ve already found a path where it’s just totally shifted out from underneath you in the early days, but it can happen. and in that case you’re going to have to pivot too.
[28:56–29:14] David Hirschfeld: So pivoting is just the way of life. Even if you’re successful for a long time, markets just shift over eventually. And if you’re not, again, if you’re focused on the problem and you’ve spent a lot of time with your customer, you’ll see those shifts in advance and start to redirect your business in the right direction.
[29:14–29:29] David Hirschfeld: I mean, we’ve seen this happen with Microsoft over and over again, for example. You know, in the early days of browsers, Microsoft was late to the browser market, and then they completely shifted.
[29:29–29:41] David Hirschfeld: I think in the late 90s, mid or no, early 90s, there was a product called NXplorer. I can’t think of what the name of that product was. The first major browser.
[29:42–29:58] David Hirschfeld: Oh, that slips my mind. Anyway, and it started to get huge traction. And then one day Microsoft realized, you know what, we’re going to be left out of the future of the Internet if we don’t shift our business.
[29:58–30:08] David Hirschfeld: And they took 800 people, which was a lot of people in Microsoft at the time, took 800 people, and they all got dedicated to the browser market.
[30:08–30:29] David Hirschfeld: And Microsoft Explorer came out of that and was the dominant browser until Chrome came along. Same thing has been happening with AI. Microsoft has made a big shift to really focus on AI now, as have other companies that weren’t as focused on it before.
[30:30–30:40] David Hirschfeld: So because if you’re not focused on AI today, then you’re way behind the curve in terms of these big software companies. So everybody has to pivot.
[30:42–30:53] David Hirschfeld: Apple, same thing with AI. So I don’t think you ever not get out of the pivot business if you’re a startup or a software company over years.
[30:55–31:09] David Hirschfeld: But hopefully you can, in the early days, as you start to scale, you found a path and you’re just building on that and expanding your reach with your product without having to constantly pivot because it’s expensive to pivot.
[31:11–31:25] Neil: I wanted to talk a little about AI because it’s at everybody’s front of mind right now, whether you’re in software development or any industry, everybody is aware that there’s an opportunity, but there’s also risks, we know that.
[31:25–31:35] Neil: I don’t want to necessarily get into those, but I’m curious about AI startups or startups that have been kind of created off the back of some of these AI platforms.
[31:36–32:10] Neil: I mean, it’s almost to the point where, and I’ll be a bit facetious here, but that anybody can do a startup based on AI today and is that going to change do you feel change the whole kind of narrative and the whole space here in every industry or do you think these basic principles of listening rather than being led by the tech are still going to apply because I think a lot of people are thinking oh well AI here in this particular application it doesn’t really matter about the market because what we’re doing is creating something completely revolutionary so therefore people are going to want it anyway
[32:10–32:19] Neil: They don’t even understand they have a need. We’re just going to launch it. So it’s very much kind of tech-driven. Do you see that playing out at all?
[32:19–32:34] David Hirschfeld: There are very few things where you can launch something where people don’t have any idea that they would have a need, and then you launch it, and then all of a sudden people realize how important this is.
[32:35–33:10] David Hirschfeld: There are examples of that all over the place, right, before AI and with AI. you know when the iPhone came out nobody when it first came out nobody really really understood what is this thing this weird phone that has nothing on the front of it right what’s the real value option value proposition here and I was one of those in the first six months of the iPhone and then of course it dawned on me what it meant and I got one and it was like you know transformative
[33:10–33:21] David Hirschfeld: But that was a product that was released with the idea that people have no idea that they actually, how much they’re going to need this until it’s out there, and then they’ll start to all understand it.
[33:22–33:40] David Hirschfeld: And that was true. But those types of products are very few and far between. Chat GPT was another one of those where people had no idea how important having, you know, a best friend that knows absolutely everything and you can get that information from them at any time.
[33:41–33:54] David Hirschfeld: And in very nuanced and sophisticated ways, how important that would be just in daily life until it got out and people started to use it. Just because the paradigm is so different, right?
[33:54–34:27] David Hirschfeld: But those are such rare cases. Most of the AI products that are coming out that are getting traction are because they’re solving specific problems. they are creating automations and reach to a market you know to markets they’re making search engine optimization so much easier and accurate they’re you know there’s so many examples of and they’re just coming out all the time they’re helping us
[34:27–35:00] David Hirschfeld: build applications. They’re helping us test applications. We’re building a couple ourselves. One is Launch First, the niche analysis, which is the hardest part of Launch First because it’s a tedious process for all the scoring. And so we’re building a Launch First AI model to basically do all that scoring for the founder in an iterative way so that they can go through that in a day instead of a month, you know,
[35:00–35:13] David Hirschfeld: or they can go through it in a few hours. We’re building one of the things that we do better than any other software company that I’ve ever competed against is how we do our estimates.
[35:13–35:30] David Hirschfeld: We do a very detailed module-wise breakdown of the projects that we’re going to build, you know, and literally agonizing detail. And then we put estimates to each of those modules, a high and a low, so that we know what the range of cost is going to be.
[35:30–35:53] David Hirschfeld: And they’re accurate because we really strive to be accurate in what we do. But that’s the most expensive process that we have internally because it takes all our senior people and it takes a lot of time to basically do these breakdowns and then estimate each one and then do reviews to make sure that the estimates are realistic and right and complete.
[35:54–36:04] David Hirschfeld: So we’re building an AI model that mimics our estimating process, and we’ll generate those, which is going to — both of these things will turn into SaaS products.
[36:05–36:45] David Hirschfeld: They solve real-world problems, and they make — they create opportunity. Like in the estimation process, most software development companies, well all the ones I’ve spoken with and I’ve talked about it and shown what we’re working on they all want it the day it comes out because it’s expensive they want to be able to do a lot of proposals and have really good detailed estimates and make it look and show how professional and accurate they can be because those are the kind of people that win projects So if somebody has a particular problem and plus we have some other projects that we want
[36:45–37:21] David Hirschfeld: to build internally, as well as the ones we’re doing for our clients, but they solve real-world problems. They make something that used to be very difficult much easier to accomplish, and sometimes they make it possible for you to grow your business in ways you couldn’t have done it before uh i mean they some of these products can be very transformative too so but uh but the idea that you can build something that nobody is aware that they need and then all of a sudden it becomes
[37:21–37:37] David Hirschfeld: this big hit those are very few and far between i’m not saying that somebody who’s listening to this that has that kind of idea doesn’t have a real one. I’m just saying that I’ve seen many founders who believed that and failed, right?
[37:37–37:49] David Hirschfeld: This is, again, belief system. And you can validate, do some early validation with people, which is what Launch First is all about, to see that they really do need it, that you can sell them on this idea.
[37:50–37:58] David Hirschfeld: Because if you can’t sell them on using it, then in the Launch First model, you’re not going to sell them when the product actually comes out.
[38:00–38:11] Neil: So we’ve been talking a lot about kind of solving real world problems. I mean, close your phrase there. And I think it’s just a great way of, you know, really sort of crystallizing what we are talking about here.
[38:11–38:35] Neil: Is there an opportunity within the model or methodology as well to look at emerging opportunities? I’m just thinking it’s a kind of a leading question. If I was to want to create some software or maybe some AI around my target audience, and I listen to them a lot because it’s who I serve, the two key emerging themes here are personalization and automation.
[38:35–38:45] Neil: So most marketers are aware they will get a lot more value from the work they do if they personalize their customers and if they alternate some of the repetitive tasks they do day to day.
[38:45–39:01] Neil: So those would be two, I guess, emerging themes, particularly being highlighted by AI. Is that also an opportunity, rather than necessarily solving problems, but to keep an eye on the marketplace and look for opportunities as well?
[39:01–39:05] Neil: Because that would feel like quite a positive thing to be focusing on. Would that work?
[39:05–39:10] David Hirschfeld: Give me an example of what you’re talking about, because I’m not sure I understand the question exactly.
[39:10–39:26] Neil: So I see an opportunity here then for a marketer who is doing maybe a lot of repetitive tasks. So if I say one of my audiences, one of my key personas who I target are marketers to be able to support them and educate them.
[39:26–39:43] Neil: So if one of their key issues is they don’t have enough time or they perceive they don’t have enough time, they would then be necessarily looking at AI to maybe automate some of the things that are repetitive tasks where they don’t necessarily add as a human being a huge amount of value.
[39:44–40:15] Neil: So I could be then thinking, OK, well, here’s an opportunity. It’s not a problem as such, because they could just carry on doing what they’re doing. But could I develop some software that says here’s an opportunity using AI to automate the publishing of some social media posts or to move some customer records from a sales system into a CRM or do it on an automated basis. And my lovely little software nugget of gold here is the thing that I want to develop to
[40:15–40:35] Neil: sit or piggyback off this opportunity. Would that also be an approach as opposed to doing deep market research to find problems? Could I actually go to the market and say, look, here’s an opportunity that we can almost co-create together would that work okay so that that is a really good
[40:35–40:57] David Hirschfeld: question because i so what i find are the the startups that have the best chance of success is when a founder is solving a problem that they’re struggling with themselves first right so i’m in an industry and i struggle and i i struggle with something and and when you say that’s not a problem because they could continue to do it the same way.
[40:58–41:09] David Hirschfeld: That’s true with anything, right? It’s a problem because it limits your ability to expand beyond what you’re doing because your time is all sucked up doing all these non-high-value tasks.
[41:09–41:20] David Hirschfeld: So that’s why we get virtual assistants, and that’s why we look for automated tools like Zapier and for being able to tie systems together.
[41:21–41:31] David Hirschfeld: So those are problems to me. the perceived impact of those problems might be low because they’re very comfortable doing it, but it’s still a problem. The cost is very high.
[41:32–41:43] David Hirschfeld: That’s one of those costs aside. Perception of impact might be low, depending on how aware they are of the fact that there’s so much opportunity they’re not going after because of all the time they’re struggling.
[41:45–42:10] David Hirschfeld: So founders who, so I always say if a founder comes to me and they say, look, this is a problem I’m struggling with that I want to automate, because I know how valuable automating this will be for me, maybe because it actually is a cost center type of problem or maybe because it’s a time center kind of problem, right?
[42:10–42:21] David Hirschfeld: But either way, they recognize the impact it has on their business. So that’s number one. And so they can easily articulate its value to them. And they’re part of an industry.
[42:21–42:33] David Hirschfeld: Second, number two is part of industry full of people exactly like them in the same type of position and role and doing the same sort of things that are struggling with the exact same problem that they’re struggling with.
[42:33–42:50] David Hirschfeld: That’s number two. Number three is they have some reach to that community of users who are people that are like them in their industry because of either because they go to conferences or they’re part of networking groups of that or whatever the reason is.
[42:50–43:16] David Hirschfeld: Or they just have lots of friends in that industry because it’s the type of industry where there’s a lot of social engagement. So that’s number three. If they have those three things and there’s no product already on the market that is easily consumable to that group that would address that problem, that is a good product, right?
[43:16–43:28] David Hirschfeld: There might be a really crappy product that addresses that problem, but nobody’s using it as not a very good problem. But there may be some really good products in the market that handle that.
[43:28–43:49] David Hirschfeld: Like, for example, let’s say somebody wants me to build them some AI chatbot that they can use and have a multi-tenant situation where they can now implement it in each of their different clients, each with its own AI intelligence for that particular client.
[43:50–44:14] David Hirschfeld: And they want to solve that problem. but there’s already a product on the market that does 90% of what they want, and it’s fairly inexpensive, and it’s really well built, that’s not a good, that would not necessarily be a good niche to start, unless you just have really broad reach into, or you have captive clients already that you can market this to.
[44:15–44:47] David Hirschfeld: So you don’t have to worry about the competitive products coming around and eating away at you. and if you have all those ingredients and that isn’t that competitive product or it’s not consumable because it’s marketed to enterprise and it’s an enterprise point that just is out of reach of your market then you’re 50% of the way there already in terms of being able to prove product market fit then launch first is pretty easy to get people to start to buy into it so I think that’s
[44:47–45:18] David Hirschfeld: what you’re talking about right so you’re solving your own problem because you know that other people like you are struggling with the same thing and usually most of the people you know that are doing the same thing you’re doing are all struggling there isn’t a good consumable product available or it’s so new nobody knows about it so there’s a little market research that goes into figuring out who the competitors are those are the best founders because they really
[45:18–45:19] David Hirschfeld: understand the problem
[45:19–45:50] Neil: yeah and I think what you’re doing here David and I think this is just so great for the audience and I’m sure there’s a lot of people kind of nodding here and saying I just need to talk to David because he kind of gets the situation that we’re in here I think it’s a lovely kind of practicality of the way you’re describing this because I think what you’re saying is very consistent but it just feels like there’s almost different colours or flavours of the same thing applying pretty much everywhere and I think that’s the beauty of this kind of model or this methodology is that it does apply to all of us
[45:50–46:11] Neil: the kind of the foundation of it is so kind of you know sort of set in absolute logic but the application of it applies just with a real sensibility everywhere so I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening to this who I’m going to invite now to kind of make contact with you I mean how can people get hold of you David?
[46:11–46:26] David Hirschfeld: Thank you well as you can see there’s my email in the signature, so you can email me. My LinkedIn, which I’m you can, there’ll be, I’m assuming there’ll be some links, right?
[46:26–46:44] David Hirschfeld: There’ll be sure. So I’ll have my LinkedIn link there. You can go to techies.com and you can see how Techies is spelled from my email. And at the top of my page, then you’ll learn about us from a software development company. That’s our bread and butter.
[46:44–47:15] David Hirschfeld: If you want to learn about Launch First, at the top of the Techies page, you’ll see a Launch First logo. Just click on that, and it’ll take you to a page that talks only about Launch First. And for anybody that is interested in starting a software company, assuming that you are ready to do this, right, or at least that you have identified your funding sources and all that, I’m happy to spend time to document your
[47:15–47:37] David Hirschfeld: requirements, create a functional spec, and then build out one of these estimates that I was telling you about so that you know what it’s going to cost to get going. And then you’re free to take that, and there’s no cost for doing any of this. We spend quite a bit of time on it, but we just know this is sort of cost to sale, you know, trying to win people’s belief that we’re the company to work with.
[47:37–47:51] David Hirschfeld: But you’re free to take all that and go shop to other software development companies as well. That’s not we’re giving it to you free of charge. So that’s just sort of our investment in the startup community.
[47:52–48:08] Neil: Which is wonderful and I thank you on behalf of the community because I think if more providers like you and experts in your kind of position were able to do similar, the world would be such an easier and more productive and positive plays.
[48:08–48:20] Neil: So, you know, I really thank you for your approach here, David. It’s refreshing. I love the fact that it’s based on, you know, solid kind of strategic marketing principles, and it just makes sense, which is what I love.
[48:20–48:29] Neil: Love to hear that. So, David, thank you so much for your time and for sharing so many of the practical tips of how to do this here on the show today. Thank you.
[48:29–48:43] David Hirschfeld: Yeah, I appreciate it too, Neil. And also for marketing companies, you know, if you deal with a lot of startups, please reach out to me because we love working in partnership with other marketing companies as well.
[48:44–48:46] Neil: Wonderful. David, thank you again.
Connect with The Neil Wilkins Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7zgDi1JFPWbSKcX0Odl4kA
Ready to take your startup to the next level? Connect with David Hirschfeld through his LinkedIn or Tekyz website.
He provides free consultations to help you outline your needs and create a detailed cost estimate for your software development project. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you—embrace the Launch First approach and start your startup confidently!

David Hirschfeld founded Tekyz, a company dedicated to transforming business software development. With over 30 years of experience, his journey began with a physics degree from UCLA and a successful sales career at Computer Associates. After launching and selling his first software company in 2000, David found his passion for empowering entrepreneurs.
He developed the Launch 1st™ methodology, which focuses on generating revenue before coding begins. This helps startups gain traction while minimizing risks. With a commitment to innovation and collaboration, David leads Tekyz in providing AI-powered development and SaaS solutions, making a meaningful impact in the tech world.
Tekyz is set to launch two new AI applications: one for automating the Launch 1st Methodology Niche Analysis and Estimiz, an AI-based project estimation tool. Outside of work, David enjoys golfing and woodworking.
You can learn more about David Hirschfeld and Tekyz by following his LinkedIn profile — David Hirschfeld’s LinkedIn Profile.
For more information about Tekyz’s services and how they can help you harness the power of AI in healthcare, visit tekyz.com or contact the founder directly at [email protected].
Launch Now, Build Later: Interview with David Hirschfeld was originally published in Tekyz Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.