Cohen: Technical founders building product first fails to de-risk customer acquisition
Jason Cohen · Episode 817 | Bootstrapping in the Age of AI with Jason Cohen · Jan 27, 2026 · at 19:37
Jason Cohen (WP Engine founder) and Rob Walling discuss startup de-risking and why engineer-founders should tackle customer acquisition before writing software.
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“The typical thing an engineer does is, is go work on the product because it's fun and you know how, and it's kind of why you're doing this in the first place and all that. It's exactly the wrong thing to do because the limiting factor here is, can you find customers? And if you build the product, you will have made no progress whatsoever on the question. Can you go find customers? Like I know you can build a product. You're an engineer. I just assume you can build a product. So doing so doesn't help at all. It doesn't de-risk the company at all.”
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