What if no one wants what you’re selling?

This blog post has a corresponding video.

Every Business is Built on Core Assumptions

At the heart of every business lie a few foundational assumptions.

Take a local grocery store, for example. Its success likely hinges on these key beliefs:

  1. People need groceries.
  2. The store is convenient and competitively priced enough to attract customers.

Tech Start-ups are more of the same.

My start-up, World Tag, offers digital product passports (DPP) for clothing brands. Our business model is grounded in three core assumptions:

  1. The EU’s ESPR Regulation will motivate brands to adopt DPP technology soon.
  2. Clothing brands will prefer to outsource this technology to third-party providers.
  3. The market for DPP technology is still untapped and full of potential.

But what if I’m wrong? The possibility of this is not 0.

How Do You Test Your Assumptions?

The only way to find out is by talking to people—but not just any people. You need to speak with potential customers.

That’s exactly what my co-founder and I have been doing this week. We’re engaging in conversations, testing assumptions, and trying to uncover whether what we’re building truly matters to our target audience.

A straightforward way to validate your idea is to put the option to pay in front of potential customers. If they’re excited and see real value, they’ll often jump at the opportunity—price becomes secondary. But if the problem you’re solving isn’t pressing for them, you’ll quickly find out. Their politeness might mask disinterest, but their wallets won’t lie.

Don’t Rely on Friends and Family

When starting out, the first people you share your idea with are often your friends and family. These are the wrong people to validate your assumptions with.

Why? Because they’ll support you no matter what, which can lead to false confidence. You need constructive feedback, not blind encouragement.

One clothing brand founder (who’s a very insightful guy I might add) mentioned that it seemed as though I was creating a solution in pursuit of a problem. I want to be weary of this. He gave me feedback that challenged two of my core assumptions:

  1. Brands may not act on DPP technology as quickly as I expect.
  2. Brands might build this technology themselves rather than outsourcing it.

Do I think he’s entirely right? Not necessarily—my sample size is still too small. But his input is a reminder to stay humble and open-minded as I gather more data.

Listen to Problems, Not Solutions

Another important lesson: when you talk to potential customers, they may share ideas for other products they think are interesting (and this will happen frequently as people are generally enthused when you have taken an interest in their field). While it’s important to listen, their solutions aren’t your focus.

What matters is understanding their problems. By focusing on the underlying problem, you uncover opportunities that align with your mission.

What’s Next?

Here’s where we currently stand:

World Tag’s weekly revenue growth rate is at 0%.

This is our North Star metric. Every decision we make revolves around improving that number. Our sole objective, week after week, is to reach a growth rate of 10% or more.

We’re not there yet.

The plan for the coming weeks is simple:

We don’t know what we don’t know yet, but that’s the nature of building something new.

Talk soon,

Marc