From the article:
Startups don’t die from lack of money. They die from lack of market.
That was the message at the 2025 Technical.ly Builders Conference panel on “Early Stage Sales & Marketing: Finding Product-Market Fit,” where Parity founder Bree Jones and product strategist Lindsay Tabas broke down why even the most visionary product ideas fail without early validation.
“The number-one reason startups fail is they launch to no market need,” Tabas said. “They were high off their own idea and built their own product based on what they wanted, didn’t really talk to customers and there was no one waiting for it when they launched.”
Tabas, founder of LearnProductMarketFit.com and a seasoned startup advisor, has helped founders and investors avoid these pitfalls through process-driven customer discovery. Jones, whose real estate company Parity transforms hyper-vacant blocks in Baltimore into communities of affordable homeownership, has lived that lesson firsthand.
The nut of their argument: If you can’t find people excited about your idea before it exists, you won’t find them after it’s built. Product-market fit isn’t an end goal; it’s a process that starts from day one.