The 3 Questions Your Startup Must Answer

(Hint: Coding Alone Won’t Save You)

One year of WTFund!

(Suchet made this, and it makes it happy)

This is a big (not very) fat culmination of EVERYTHING I’ve managed to learn in the last one year, and as you can see, it’s not a lot! But it’s something!

It’s been so incredible working with the most incredible startups for the last one year. Here is what I’ve managed to distill down to truth:

Startups, for all their complexity, usually crumble or fly because of three deceptively simple questions:

1. What are you building, and why?

2. How will you build it?

3. How (and to whom) will you sell it?

That’s it. That’s the whole game.

Every investor conversation, every roadmap, every pitch deck, every long walk with a co-founder wrestling with existential dread- it all loops back to these three questions. If you’re not answering them clearly, you’re either spinning your wheels or building a hobby, not a company.

And yet, most founders spend 90% of their energy on only one of them: the build. Why? Because it used to be the hard part. You needed engineers. Capital. Servers. Now, in 2025, spinning up a functional product is practically frictionless. The real friction lies elsewhere.

So the question becomes: if building is easy, where’s the bottleneck?

Answer: the first and third questions.
Why does this need to exist, and how the hell are you going to get anyone to care?

Let’s dig into each question, layer by layer, and break down why startups that don’t ask (and re-ask) these three questions early and often are destined to become Medium post case studies on “what not to do.”

1. What (and Why) Are You Building?

You’re not building a product. You’re solving a problem.

Every founder thinks they’ve nailed this. Most haven’t. That’s why I’m starting here.

You are not building a product. You are solving a problem. If you don't internalize that, you're already behind.

This is the part where you make meaning. It’s not about how cool your tech is, or how brilliant your vision slide looks. It’s about pain. A problem that is real, widespread, and persistent. Something people will pay for, even grudgingly.

But here’s what I see, over and over again: founders fall in love with an idea, or worse, a technology. They say things like:

• “We’re building an AI tool to optimize X.”

• “It’s like Uber, but for Y.”

• “It’s a blockchain-based solution for Z.”

The format is predictable. The excitement is real. The relevance? Often questionable.

The most dangerous thing in early-stage startups is solving a problem no one actually feels. If the problem doesn’t keep someone up at night or cost them time, money, or reputation, you’re already fighting uphill.

The Cure: First-Principles Thinking and Relentless User Research

Instead of starting with what you think should exist, start with what people already do. Peel back the layers.

• What are they struggling with?

• What hacks and workarounds have they normalized?

• What makes them sigh at 11 p.m. while finishing a workflow?

These aren’t casual questions. These are field research prompts. You need to be part founder, part detective.

And let me be clear: this isn’t some warm-up exercise. This is the work.

A Real Example

A founder I recently worked with was building a job-matching tool for new grads. Sounds good, right? Jobs are a massive market. But they were optimizing for resume parsing and automated ranking. When they actually talked to students, what came up over and over wasn’t the applying part- it was that they had no idea what to apply for. They were overwhelmed, directionless, and exhausted.

So the founder pivoted: instead of resume tools, they built a “career map” quiz that helped students understand their own goals. Engagement tripled. Why? Because they solved a real problem. Not the imagined one.

Validating the Why

Today, you don’t need months to validate your hypothesis.
You need:

• One landing page

• One waitlist

• 10 conversations

• A weekend of no-code tinkering

If you’re not willing to get your hands dirty here, you’re not ready to build. Period.

And when you do build, build around the pain. Not features. Not trends. Solve one problem better than anyone else. That becomes your wedge. Your marketing hook. Your reason to exist.

“There are no facts inside the building, so get the heck outside.” - Steve Blank

Still holds up.

2. How Will You Build It?

The tools are better. Are you?

Let’s not romanticize this. In 2025, building is barely a moat. It’s table stakes.

There’s a SaaS, a no-code tool, a pre-built library, or a generative AI wrapper for everything.

• Need a payments layer? Stripe.

• Want to run workflows? Zapier or Make.

• Building a chatbot? OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere. Pick your poison.

• Frontend? Retool. Webflow. Flutter.

• Backend? Supabase. Firebase. AWS Amplify.

There is no excuse left for not building fast. The market has essentially given you a cheat code.

And that changes how you win.

You don’t win by being the best engineer. You win by being the fastest to validate. The best at feedback loops. The clearest about what not to build.

Commoditization Has Leveled the Playing Field

Everyone has access to the same tech now. Which means your advantage is no longer in implementation. It’s in insight and execution speed.

A decade ago, technical founders ruled the world. Now, the most dangerous founders are hybrids. They know enough to build, but they’re obsessed with testing more than tinkering.

They build for validation, not applause.

The “Done Is Better Than Perfect” Renaissance

Founders today are held back by perfectionism masked as quality control. But most MVPs fail not because they’re ugly, but because no one needed them.

Get over the idea that your v1 needs to be impressive.

• It needs to be clear.

• It needs to be usable.

• It needs to be in-market.

A 60% product tested by 10 real users will always outperform a 90% product in a vacuum.

Craft Still Matters, but Timing Matters More

Let’s not swing too far. Craftsmanship still counts. Users notice sloppy UX. Investors clock poor data hygiene. Scalability isn’t optional once growth kicks in.

But those are second-order problems. The first-order problem is: Can you ship?
And if yes: Can you ship again next week?

• A startup is a machine for learning.

• Building is the mechanism.

• But iteration is the goal.

So build smart, build lean, build fast- but most importantly, build to learn. Not to impress.

3. How (and To Whom) Will You Sell It?

This is where the real work begins.

You’ve nailed your “what.” You’ve launched your MVP.
Now comes the scariest, most brutal, most rewarding part: distribution.

Here’s the unvarnished truth: you’re not a startup until someone pays you, or uses you, or recommends you without a nudge.

Until then, you’re just a well-organized hope.

Selling isn’t some phase that comes after product. It’s not a “hire later” job. It’s not your CMO’s problem. It’s your job.

And it starts now.

What Most Founders Get Wrong

They conflate shipping with selling.
They think “we’re live” means “we’re in market.”
They spend 6 months building but 6 minutes on go-to-market.
And when traction doesn’t magically appear, they blame the user.

The truth? You didn’t build the wrong thing. You didn’t get it in front of the right person.

Distribution is strategy. It’s positioning. It’s storytelling. It’s pipeline.

It is, quite literally, everything.

The Founder as First Salesperson

You cannot outsource this.
Paul Graham says it best: “Do things that don’t scale.”
That means:

• Cold emails. 100 of them. No shortcuts.

• Phone calls. Demos. Meetups. Twitter threads.

• Talking to users 1:1 until your throat hurts.

You must become obsessed with the pathway between what you built and who needs it. That’s distribution.

And the sooner you do this, the more honest your startup gets.

Pick a Channel. Own It.

Every startup needs a wedge. A beachhead.

Maybe it’s SEO.
Maybe it’s influencer marketing.
Maybe it’s going door-to-door, demoing in co-working spaces.
Maybe it’s hacking a community.
Maybe it’s outbound sales with a highly targeted ICP.
Maybe it’s giving the product away for free and monetizing something adjacent.

What matters is that you pick something and work it relentlessly.

Stop trying to do 10 channels at once. Pick 1-2. Go deep. Test. Learn. Repeat.

A well-executed mediocre channel will beat a poorly executed “genius” idea 10/10 times.

Signals That You're Getting It Right:

• You’re tracking CAC, LTV, funnel conversion, even roughly.

• You know where your next 50 users are coming from.

• You’re hearing feedback you didn’t ask for- because people are using it.

• People are referring others without being prompted.

Sales is not a side function.
It is the core expression of your value.
If you can’t explain why someone should care- you don’t yet have a startup.

The Difference Between Founders Who Scale and Founders Who Stall

The founders who scale- the ones who break out of the early stage maze- are not always the most brilliant builders. They’re not always the best networked or the most charismatic. But they share a few defining traits that most startup advice forgets to mention.

First, they are ruthlessly honest.

They don’t gaslight themselves with optimism. If something isn’t working, they don’t polish it. They kill it. They don’t pitch themselves while building; they test assumptions like scientists and pivot without ego.

Second, they are deeply curious.

About their users. About their blind spots. About how their own product fits into the world. They never stop asking questions. They don’t default to “best practices” unless they’ve first interrogated whether those practices make sense for their unique wedge.

And third, they are terrifyingly persistent.

They don’t get distracted by the dopamine loops of press or pitch competitions. They care about real traction. They don’t chase virality, they chase trust. One user at a time. One sale at a time. Until the engine starts turning.

These founders don’t treat sales as dirty work.
They don’t treat research as pre-work.
They don’t treat the MVP as an end-goal.
They treat the startup like what it is: a high-speed experiment in unlocking trust at scale.

Bringing It All Together: A Founder’s Field Manual

Most of startup life isn’t glamorous. It’s slog.
But if you anchor to these three questions- and keep answering them with evolving clarity- you give yourself a shot.

Here’s how you know you’re on the right track:

Final Thoughts: No More Hiding. Startups Are a Test of Truth.

In this new startup world, building is no longer the bottleneck. That’s not a comforting fact. It’s a challenging one.

You don’t get extra points for launching an app anymore. Everyone can build. Everyone has access to the same toolkits, templates, frameworks, and AI copilots. And when everything becomes buildable, building stops being special.

What’s left?

Truth.

Truth about whether the problem you’re solving is real.
Truth about whether you’ve found the most urgent version of it.
Truth about whether your product actually helps anyone.
Truth about whether you’re willing to get uncomfortable to prove it.

The founders who win in this era aren’t necessarily the best coders.
They’re the clearest thinkers.
The most relentless communicators.
The fastest to test.
The quickest to admit they were wrong, and fix it.
They don’t hide behind product. They don’t hide behind process.
They sit with the messiness. And they sell anyway.

Because they understand something that doesn’t get said enough:

Startups aren’t about being right. They’re about becoming right, fast.

That means your job as a founder isn’t to look smart, or polished, or visionary.
It’s to look at your product every single day and ask: “Is this still solving the problem I said it would?”
It’s to face the market, even when it’s indifferent.
It’s to talk to users until you know them better than they know themselves.
It’s to sell not because it’s easy, but because it’s the only way to survive.

Every startup begins as a question.
And your job isn’t to answer it once. It’s to keep answering it, better and better, until the world agrees with you.
That’s the discipline. That’s the work. That’s the difference between a demo and a company.

So take the three questions seriously:

What are you building, and why?
Keep asking until the answer makes your customer nod before you finish speaking.

How will you build it?
Keep shipping until your product becomes boring to build, but impossible to live without.

How (and to whom) will you sell it?
Keep knocking on doors until one opens, and then turn that open door into a corridor.

Because startups don’t die from lack of features.
They die from lack of focus.
Lack of urgency.
Lack of demand.

And demand is earned, one painful, brilliant, honest conversation at a time.

The era of “just build” is over.
This is the era of clarity.
Of speed.
Of conviction.
Of shipping, selling, and repeating until it clicks.

So if you’re reading this, wondering if you’re on the right track, go back to the questions. Sit with them. Sweat them. Make them your daily ritual. Because if you can answer them clearly and convincingly, you don’t just have a startup.

You have a shot.

A real one.

And that’s more than most people ever get.