Focus on sales early

Inventing a product and selling it are two different things. As much as building a product, you need to build a sales-funnel.

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The perfect solution that no-one knows about is worthless. Vice-versa, a mediocre solution that everyone knows about and uses is gold. As a business owner, it's not your job to just "have the best product on the market". Having the "best product on the market" is worthless, if no-one uses it. Revenue is only generated if a product is sold and selling a product is only possible if your target group knows about your offer and your story.

A viable go-to-market strategy that fills a trackable and scalable sales funnel is as vital to the business as the solution that is sold itself. And you need to plan for it. Just like you budget costs for developing & maintaining your solution, you need to budget to develop & maintain your sales funnel. And just like developing a product, developing a functioning sales funnel will take lots of trial & error: Finding the right channels to reach the customers, finding the right messaging, building a brand, automating the funnel etc. and that will take time.

As a startup it's important that you not only focus on your product, but also on your sales funnel. Treat the funnel exactly the same way that you treat your product offer and make sure to plan resources and time for it to grow.