One time on my way to a college football game, I noticed how annoying it was to find parking near the stadium. All of the designated parking spaces were taken so I pulled up to a homeowners house with a big $20 sign in the front lawn. As I rolled the window down the homeowner put his hand out asking for cash. I asked him if he had a way to take credit cards and he said that he didn’t.
Suddenly, a light bulb went off. I thought, what if there was an app (famous last words) that allowed homeowners that lived close to stadiums market their driveways on Gameday and have the app handle payments, scheduling and marketing. Uber for driveways.
I spent the better part of three months designing the app with a team in India, meeting with homeowners to pitch them on the idea of listing their driveways for games and events and meeting with potential venture capitalists to invest.
I spent $20,000 developing the app and hundreds of hours working on something that didn't work, and was really never going to work.
How come? I built something with no Dollar Demand. I was trying to solve a problem for the homeowner where the alternative was something free and there was no evidence that people were going to start paying for something like that in the future.
Every business that I've built that has had success had very clear evidence from the beginning that people would pay money to have their problem solved. There was demand that was accustomed to spending dollars to have their problem solved.
