The Real Crux Of Starting A Tech Startup (i Will Not Promote)

Starting a tech startup is hard. Not in a vague, motivational way—but in a genuinely complex, multi-variable way.

There are a lot of moving parts: choosing a tech stack, building the product, finding ideas, finding customers, raising money, finding co-founders, strategy, execution, etc. Every one of these is difficult in its own right.

I’m a tech guy, and even choosing a tech stack can be exhausting. Tech nerds argue endlessly about what’s “best”: React vs Vue, AWS vs GCP vs Azure, React Native vs Flutter vs native—on and on. In reality, none of this matters to the customer. So I pick a stack I’m productive with, even if it’s not the most modern or hyped.

But here’s the thing: none of that is the core problem.

The #1 issue for early-stage startups is finding your customer—or more precisely, finding your position in the market. Product-market fit is the root problem behind almost everything else. Even startups that raise VC money often still don’t truly understand their market.

I’ve also seen people fiercely protect their “groundbreaking idea,” as if no one else on Earth could possibly think of it. Some even insist on NDAs before explaining the idea—despite having no product, no users, no traction.

The uncomfortable truth:

No matter how unique your idea feels, someone else has already thought about it.

Ideas are cheap. Extremely cheap. You can ask ChatGPT for business ideas and get 10, 100, or 1,000 of them. But ideas without validation are worthless.

What actually matters is understanding a real problem, for real people, who are willing to pay (or at least care enough to change behavior).

Everything else—tech stack, architecture, tooling, even funding—is secondary.

Hot take: Early-stage founders who obsess over stack, NDAs, and “stealth mode” are often avoiding the one thing that matters: getting rejected by real customers.

PS: This is a mix of lessons from startup founders and my own experience.

PS2: Yes, AI helped clean up my messy writing, but the thoughts are mine. Pinky promise.