在我和共同创始人刚刚萌生创业想法之后，我的财务本能就驱使我打开Excel开始分析。在接下来的几周中，我一直在埋头计算单位经济效益，构建商业模型，预测市场规模和其他数据点——例如五年收入预测和客户撷取成本。我甚至还建模了各种价格下超过50种不同的转化率，以证实我的假设。进行所有这些分析时，我忘记了产品本身。

天真的是，我们以为这才是建立下一家“独角兽”公司的第一步。我们的想法是：如果我们没有清楚地弄明白接下来如何挣钱，我们的公司就不会成功。

直到我们的第一位投资者马克·库班阻止我们时，我们才搞清了现实。他说：“不要计算这些数字，你们昨天就该把产品做好。”他是对的。进行分析没问题，但产品才应该是最重要的。要是能在浪费这么多星期之前就认识到这一点，当然更好。从那时起，我们还学到了更多创业经验：

辨别那些虚假的肯定

朋友、家人甚至陌生人都可能在没有私心的情况下对你说谎。“这主意真棒！”“我会买的！”“我喜欢这个概念！”很少有人说：“这可能会失败，”或“我不会买的。”作为一名有追求的企业家，不要被那些虚假的肯定误导了。真正重要的观点来自你的消费者，而且只有他们真正体验过你的产品才行。想办法让你的消费者购买你的最小可行性产品（minimum viable product, MVP），这样你就可以减少失败的可能。相信我，不要理会七大姑八大姨的热情吹捧。

迅速打造产品

按照马克的建议，我迅速联系了一名工程师来打造我们的第一代产品。我们想要把产品——即便它还不完美——交到消费者手中，理由很简单：从我们的目标人群处收集购买数据。在建立技术原型之前，我们在网上进行了调查，研究了消费者的兴趣，收集了许多特定数据。但出乎意料的是，在推出第一代产品后，我们发现消费者的兴趣与调查结果截然相反。换句话说，消费者没有说真话。因此，测试我们的最小可行性产品给了我们至关重要、不可替代的定性反馈，让我们对消费者体验、招聘需求和公司本身有了更深入的理解。从最小可行性产品测试中了解到的东西，让我们踏上了新的行程。

不要试图做到完美

为了做出第一代产品，我们需要变废为宝，随机应变。如果我们想要做出产品来收集消费者数据，我们就没有时间去完善产品（至少现在还没有）。所以，我们聚集在工程师的车库里，利用二手3D打印部件、旧电脑配件和一些多余的家居用品做出了我们的产品。老实说，它很丑，但是，这个拼凑起来的机器确认了我们的销量和定价空间，从而彻底改变了我们之前的单位经济效益。所以，要随机应变，不要试图把每件事都做到最好。即便你没有得到投资或没有团队，也可以打造产品。你需要的只是几个帮助你制作最小可行性产品和研究市场需求的承包人。

如果你是一名有抱负的企业家，还有下一步的宏伟构想，你就需要真实的消费者数据。打造最小可行性产品，试试它的吸引力。如果你有真实的消费者数据，说服投资者给你的新项目或公司投资就会简单得多。要从错误中吸取教训：不要沉迷于建立美好的财务模型中。最重要的是，不要害怕打造并不成熟的产品。你可以在未来完善它，但现在，你需要收集重要的反馈，这是成功创立公司的关键。

杰基·德·拉·罗莎是一名企业家，也是风投支持的隐形公司BeautyTouch的共同创始人。在BeautyTouch之前，她就职于Radical Ventures风投资本，并让公司投资组合的价值达到了5500万美元。在波士顿地区，她积极地给创业者和他们的初创公司提供建议和指导。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

审校：任文科

As soon as my cofounder and I came up with the idea for our startup, my financial instincts took over and I immediately opened Excel to run analyses. I spent the following weeks calculating the unit economics, building a business model, and guessing market size and other data points—like five-year revenue forecasts and customer acquisition costs. I even modeled more than 50 different conversion rates at various prices to confirm our assumptions. And through all of this analysis and number-crunching, I forgot about the product itself.

Naively, we assumed this was the first step in creating the next unicorn. Our thinking was this: If we can’t see an up-front path to clearly making money, our business won’t succeed.

Real life didn’t hit us until our first investor, Mark Cuban, stopped us and said, “Instead of projecting these figures, you should have built your product yesterday.” He was right. Analysis is all well and good, but the product should be the horse leading the cart. Of course, I wish I had realized that before wasting so many weeks. Since then, we’ve learned a few more lessons about running a startup:

Recognize false positives

Friends, family, and even strangers will lie to you in the most altruistic way possible. “What a fabulous idea!” “I would buy it!” “Love the concept!” Fewer will say, “That’s probably going to fail,” or, “I won’t buy that from you.” As an aspiring entrepreneur, don’t be fooled by false positives. The only opinion that really matters is your actual customers’, and even more so if they’ve been able to truly experience your product. Find a way to get your customers to purchase your initial minimum viable product (MVP), and you will reduce the possibility of failure. And believe me, try to tune out your Aunt Sally’s enthusiasm to a degree.

Be quick to build

Abiding by Mark’s advice, I quickly reached out to an engineer to build our first-generation product. We wanted to get something—even if it wasn’t perfect—into the hands of our customers for one simple reason: to gather purchasing data from our target demographic. Before building the prototype, we sent out online surveys to gauge customer interest and gather more specific data. To our surprise, after rolling out the first-generation product, it became clear that our consumers’ interests were totally contrary to the survey results. In other words, consumers lie. Therefore, testing our MVP gave us vital, irreplaceable, and qualitative feedback that helped shape the customer experience, our hiring needs, and our company itself. Everything we learned from our MVP testing set us on a new course.

Don’t try to be perfect

In order to pull together our first-generation product, we needed to scavenge and be resourceful. If we wanted to create something to gather customer data, we didn’t have time to engineer the perfect machine (at least, not yet). So, we set up shop in our engineer’s garage and fabricated our product with used 3-D printer components, old computers parts, and surplus Home Depot supplies. Honestly, the product looked ugly, but, our hacked-together machine validated our sales and pricing variables, which in turn completely changed our previous unit economics. So be resourceful and don’t try to make everything perfect. Build even if you don’t have an investment or team. All you need is a few contractors to help cobble together an MVP and gauge market demand.

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur with the next big idea, you need real customer data. Build an MVP and test traction. Persuading investors to invest in your new project or company will be significantly easier when you have actual customer data. And learn from our mistakes: Don’t’ get lost in building beautiful financial models. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to build an underdeveloped product. You can advance the product in the future, but right now you want to aggregate important feedback that is critical in successfully launching your business.

Jackie De La Rosa is an entrepreneur and cofounder of BeautyTouch, a venture-backed stealth company. Before BeautyTouch, she worked in venture capital for Radical Ventures and managed their portfolio valued at $55 million. She is an avid adviser and mentor for founders and their startups in the greater Boston area.