If you build it, they will come. An entrepreneur asked me for advice last week.
By Michael Erickson Facchin · May 4, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
If you build it, they will come.
An entrepreneur asked me for advice last week. He's been working on a product that is steps ahead of the market.
The problem: he has zero clients. And he's running out of money.
"What am I doing wrong?" he asked me.
I told him to pull up Amazon, search for "protein powder," and look closely at the results.
"The market will never come to you," I said. "You have to go to the market."
Look at the Top of Search real estate in the image above. Every single product in that highly coveted top row has a "Sponsored" tag. To get to the organic listings, you have to scroll down to the Rest of Search.
It's a story I've heard hundreds of times. And it's the reason why so many entrepreneurs fail. They rely entirely on the hope of organic discovery.
A ton of customers magically showing up after you build something only happens in Hollywood films.
Unless you've got a billion dollars in cash and you can see into the future, you have to find your target audience now. You have to pay to play to secure that top real estate, identify a pain they're experiencing, and put a damn good solution directly in front of their faces.
Organic rank is the reward for sales velocity, not the starting line.