One thing I don't understand -- We all know that the odds of any given idea being successful (right team, moment, messaging, etc) is low. In product teams, we plan for that and build a portfolio which balances risk vs. return. Why don't we create more startups the same way?

Some startups have a deep user insight that they are building around, often born out of personal experience with a problem in the world. Those are fast to start and get to market, but, IMO, are rare and risk being fixated on the solution instead of the user problem.

I've been thinking about this recently and reflecting on our early journey @GuildEducation. We set a mission and a problem we were hoping to solve: Unlocking economic opportunity through education. Then we let our employer customers and student users guide the solution(s).

Prototype 1 was a soft-skills bootcamp for frontline managers, called MTP (Management Training Program). MTP got enough traction to get us in front of a few more employers and student users to do more discovery and find product market fit.

Related to another tweet from earlier, MTP (and all of our early Guild run programs - we had a great English Language Learning program, a Writing Center, and a few others) were excellent cash flow cycle products which helped us avoid early dilution.

But MTP (Management Training Program) wasn't our forever product. I recall the late night conversations about what do we do. Do we spin it out as a school? Shut it down? Double down on content creation? In the end, we shut it down. It was a hard, emotional and correct decision.

Ultimately, this approach found multiple big product ideas -- the world's first higher education marketplace, a method to translate workforce training into education credit, a higher education payment network that leveraged company credit to avoid student debt, and more.

There's definitely drawbacks to this problem first approach, especially organizational debt of past prototypes/tests that are still in market but on the back of these approaches, Guild was able to scale from 0 to a billion dollar + company within a few years.

I'd like to see more startups start with this user + problem first approach in their founding story. Founders, what's holding you back? Do investors or potential hires not get it? Is the fear of "not knowing the answer" debilitating? Love to hear more and help support.