A week or so into my first CTO gig (I was brought in to help rescue a failing startup), a team returned from a trip to the customer where they were demoing something that my predecessor had been working on for months. I asked "how& #39;d it go"? 1/3

They responded "the customer doesn& #39;t want it. They say they solved that problem six months ago." All the feedback during development came from an internal PM—an "industry expert," someone with "extensive experience." 2/3

He was in no way a replacement for actual conversations with actual customers. 4 devs working for 6 months—money down a hole. No wonder they were failing. 3/3