We’ve Lived This

We built it. It worked. People told us they loved it. And nobody bought it.

That’s not some vague anecdote. That’s my actual experience, more than once.

One of my early projects was clean, fast, and solved a clear problem. The feedback was glowing. The few people we talked to said they wanted it.

So we launched. And got crickets.

We assumed because people liked it, they’d pay for it.

Wrong.

The Pattern We Don’t Talk About

This happens constantly in early-stage product and dev circles. We treat launch day like the finish line. We ship. We post the landing page. We pat ourselves on the back.

Then we wait. And nothing happens.

Eventually we move on, thinking “the market wasn’t ready.”

But the truth is, we didn’t sell.

Why It Happens (And Why I Get It)

If you’re like me, you love solving problems. Building things. Crafting great UX. Designing clean flows.

You probably don’t love selling. It can feel awkward. Pushy. Like someone else’s job.

But here’s the reality:

If you care about what you’re building, you have to care about getting it into the hands of people who need it.

That’s what selling is.

Everyone Sells

It’s not just a founder thing. Or a sales rep thing. Everyone on the team should be thinking about how to sell.

If you’re a developer, you’re not off the hook. You don’t need to run sales calls, but you should be asking:

Does this feature actually solve a user's pain?

Does it reinforce our product’s value?

Could it help someone say “yes” faster?

The best devs I’ve worked with think beyond the code. They get the why. They build for retention. For delight. For clarity. They will even want to be apart of sales calls so that they can understand first hand what people actually want.

And the smaller the company, the more important that is. Because if there is no sales team, it’s just on you.

AI Makes Building Easier, Not Selling

AI tools are making it ridiculously easy to build. Auto-code. Auto-UI. Auto-docs. Whole product scaffolds from a prompt.

But selling? Still hard.

More builders means more noise. Customers have more options. The winners won’t just be the best builders, they’ll be the best communicators.

The product that sells isn’t always the best one. It’s the one that understands the customer, earns their trust, and makes the value obvious.

Where I’m At

I’m not sharing this because I’ve nailed it. I haven’t.

I still hesitate or avoid pitching. I still lean toward building over validating. I’d rather prompt then pick up the phone.

But I’m learning. I’m practicing. I’m reminding myself that product and sales are not separate.

It’s all one thing: connecting something you built with someone who needs it. That's what design is, that's what development is, that's what building is all about.  It’s not about you, it’s about them, and you have to know them, and more importantly, they have to know you.