Is Brooks Saddle Worth the Investment? Expert Insights

The Unsexy Truth About Starting

Everyone wants to talk about the launch moment. The press release. The product reveal. Nobody wants to talk about the three months you spend learning your payment processor’s API documentation, or the weekend you realize your entire tech stack needs rebuilding because you made the wrong architectural decision at 2 AM.

The truth is, starting a business is 90% unglamorous foundation-building and 10% the stuff that makes it onto LinkedIn. When you’re planning your launch, you’re not thinking about the real work: talking to potential customers, iterating your core offering based on feedback, and building systems that don’t require you to be involved in every single transaction.

I’ve watched founders get paralyzed waiting for the “right time.” They optimize their pitch deck while their competitor ships. They perfect their business plan while their rival gains market traction. The unsexy truth? Your first version won’t be your best version. It’ll probably be pretty rough. And that’s exactly how it should be.

The companies that survive aren’t the ones with the most polished initial presentation. They’re the ones that move fast, learn from real market feedback, and iterate ruthlessly. If you’re not slightly embarrassed by your first product, you waited too long to launch it.

Finding Your Actual Problem to Solve

Here’s where most founders trip up: they fall in love with a solution before they’ve validated the problem. You get excited about building with a specific technology or creating a particular feature set, and then you spend months discovering that nobody actually needs what you’ve built.

When you’re identifying market opportunities, your job is to become obsessed with understanding customer pain. Not the pain you think they should have. Not the pain that would make your solution elegant. The actual, real, day-to-day frustration that makes someone willing to pay money or change their behavior.

I learned this the hard way. I built a feature I was convinced would be a game-changer. It was technically impressive. It solved a problem beautifully. Zero customers cared. It took conversations with dozens of potential users to realize I’d optimized for the wrong thing entirely.

The best founders are obsessive researchers. They talk to potential customers constantly. They hang out where their audience hangs out. They read the comments sections. They join relevant Slack communities and Reddit threads. They’re not trying to convince anyone of anything—they’re just listening for the patterns in what people actually struggle with.

Your developing your business model comes after you’ve deeply understood the problem. Not before. The problem is the foundation. Everything else is just architecture on top of that.

Building Without Breaking the Bank

You don’t need $500K in funding to validate your idea. In fact, I’d argue that constraints are your friend early on. When resources are limited, you become creative about what actually matters. You stop building features and start solving problems. You learn to distinguish between what sounds impressive and what actually moves the needle.

There are legitimate reasons to pursue funding your venture at some point, but bootstrap when you can. Bootstrapping teaches you unit economics. It forces you to think about revenue from day one instead of just growth. It keeps you focused on customers instead of investors.

When you’re managing startup finances on a shoestring, you get ruthless about priorities. You don’t build the nice-to-have features. You don’t hire people for roles that don’t directly contribute to customer acquisition or retention. You don’t attend every conference or rent a fancy office. You focus on the 20% of activities that generate 80% of results.

There’s no shortage of tools that are free or nearly free to start with: Stripe for payments, AWS for infrastructure, Airtable for databases, Zapier for automation. You can build a legitimate business for less than $100 a month if you’re scrappy about it. The constraint forces clarity.

I’ve also found that early customers are willing to pay for half-built solutions if those solutions genuinely solve their problem. You don’t need the perfect product. You need a product that works, that solves a real pain point, and that you can iterate on based on customer feedback. Price it appropriately for the value it delivers, and you’ve got a revenue engine that validates your idea while funding your development.

Getting Your First Customers (Seriously)

This is where the rubber meets the road. You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it and nobody’s willing to use it, you’ve got a hobby, not a business.

Most founders are uncomfortable with sales. They think it’s sleazy or inauthentic. Here’s the reframe: if you genuinely believe your product solves a real problem for real people, then telling people about it isn’t selling—it’s doing them a favor. You’re offering them a solution to something that’s been frustrating them.

When you’re customer acquisition strategies for early traction, forget about fancy marketing for now. Talk to people directly. Email potential customers. Reach out to them on LinkedIn. Comment thoughtfully on their posts. Join communities where your ideal customers gather and contribute genuine value before you ever mention your product.

Your first customers won’t come from ads or viral content. They’ll come from you personally reaching out and having real conversations. It doesn’t scale, but it works. And you learn more from those conversations than you could from any amount of marketing theory.

I’ve seen founders get their first 100 customers entirely through direct outreach. Personal emails. Phone calls. Coffee meetings. That’s not a scalable strategy long-term, but it’s the most efficient way to find your earliest believers and learn what actually resonates about your offering.

Keep track of what works. Which types of customers are most responsive? Where are they hanging out? What specific pain point gets them most excited about your solution? Once you identify those patterns, you can start to systematize your approach.

The Founder’s Mindset Shift

Building something from nothing requires a particular way of thinking. It’s not about being relentlessly optimistic—that’s naive and counterproductive. It’s about being clear-eyed about reality while maintaining conviction about your direction.

You need to develop what I call “grounded optimism.” You acknowledge the very real possibility of failure. You understand your competition. You know the market dynamics working against you. And yet you move forward anyway because you believe in the value you’re creating and you’re willing to do the work to prove it.

This connects directly to overcoming startup challenges. You’re going to face rejection. Customers will say no. Investors will pass. Your first marketing campaign will flop. Your technical approach will hit unexpected limitations. This isn’t failure—it’s data. It’s information that helps you adjust your course.

The founders who make it are the ones who treat every setback as a learning opportunity instead of validation that they’re on the wrong path. You need resilience, but resilience isn’t about never getting discouraged. It’s about getting discouraged, processing it, and moving forward anyway.

There’s also the mental game of building your founding team. If you’re starting solo, you’re carrying the entire weight of your vision. That’s isolating. Find other founders to talk to. Join a startup community. Get a mentor who’s been through it. You need people who understand what you’re going through because they’ve been there.

And if you’re bringing on co-founders or early team members, choose people you genuinely respect and trust. You’re going to spend more time with them than your family. You’re going to have difficult conversations about money, direction, and priorities. Those relationships need to be built on real trust and aligned values.

Scaling When You’re Ready

Once you’ve found product-market fit—and you’ll know it when you see it because customers will be actively seeking you out and referring their friends—you can start thinking about scaling. Not before.

Too many founders try to scale prematurely. They hire big teams, spend heavily on marketing, and build infrastructure for the growth they hope to achieve rather than the growth they’ve actually achieved. Then they run out of money before they prove the fundamentals work.

When you’re ready to scale, hiring your first employees is about bringing on people who can amplify what’s already working. You’ve probably been doing everything yourself up to this point. Now you’re delegating and systematizing. Your first hires should be people who can take something you’ve built and make it better and faster.

This is also when you might consider fundraising for growth. If you’ve validated your model and you’ve got clear unit economics, external funding can accelerate your growth significantly. Just understand what you’re trading: investor capital for reduced control and increased pressure to hit specific growth targets.

I’ve seen successful bootstrapped companies and successful venture-backed companies. The difference isn’t which path you choose—it’s whether you’re intentional about your choice and clear about the tradeoffs. Bootstrapping lets you move at your own pace and keep full control. Fundraising lets you move faster and scale bigger, but you’re answering to other people.

The most important thing at any stage is maintaining focus. You’ll be tempted to chase every opportunity, build every feature customers request, and expand into adjacent markets. Resist that urge. Focus on doing one thing exceptionally well. Once that’s locked in and systematized, then you can expand.

FAQ

How much money do I need to start a business?

Depends entirely on what you’re building. A service-based business can start with almost nothing. A hardware company needs more capital. The best approach is to start as lean as possible and let revenue fund your growth. Most successful founders started with less than $10K and bootstrapped from there.

Should I quit my job to start my business?

Not necessarily. Validate your idea while you still have income. Build your first product on nights and weekends. Get your first paying customers. Once you’ve de-risked the fundamental concept, then you can consider going full-time. The exception is if the opportunity requires full-time focus or if you’ve already got meaningful traction and revenue.

How do I know if my idea is actually viable?

Talk to potential customers. Not friends and family—actual strangers who fit your target customer profile. Ask them about their current solution and their pain points. Tell them about your idea and watch their reaction. Do they lean in or lean back? Would they actually pay for this? The market will tell you quickly if you’re onto something.

What’s the most common reason startups fail?

Lack of market fit. They build something nobody wants. Or they run out of money before they find enough customers. Both come down to the same issue: not staying focused on solving a real problem that people are willing to pay for.

How do I stay motivated when things get tough?

Connect with your original vision regularly. Remember why you started. Celebrate small wins. Build relationships with other founders who understand the journey. And be honest with yourself about whether you’re still excited about this problem. If you’re not, that’s information too. Some ideas are meant to stay ideas, and that’s okay.