Talk to customers before writing code

Yesterday night I had an idea to improve hostel management services. I enjoyed staying at hostels a month ago when traveling North India and had a couple of ideas to improve existing solutions.

After writing down my thoughts, potential problems with current solutions, and a plan for MVP, I began coding right away. I estimated that I will be able to code a Property Management System (PMS) in two days, over the weekend.

I went to sleep at 3am after coding for 4 hours and creating an awful looking guest and invoice list.

I have been reading The Minimalist Entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia. In the morning, a section from the book prompted me to verify my hypothesis: My customers will use my PMS because it will be good looking and have more features.

To help me interview prospects, I looked for a summary of the book The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick and found one by Ivaylo Durmonski. I read the summary twice and took notes.

I called Pranav, the owner of a hostel where I had stayed a month ago. I loved talking to him. From our conversation, it became evident that there is no hurdle in managing hostel operations given the current solutions.

I am very happy that I finally had the courage to talk to a potential customer instead of taking the easy way out and code.