Essay · ~15 min read

Yes, but who said they would actually buy the damn thing?

Jason Cohen · A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Free Intermediate

Cohen goes straight at the founder self-deception in the question: a room full of enthusiastic yeses is not validation unless people commit money or a concrete next step. He is blunt about the gap between what founders tell themselves and what actually happened in the room, which matches the silence-after-the-call problem exactly. A good essay to reread whenever you feel tempted to call a friendly meeting a win.

  • Ten people saying they would buy is the only kind of validation that counts, not general enthusiasm.
  • A founder's hubris about future buyers usually outruns any evidence they actually have.
  • If nobody has committed money or a real next step, you have not validated anything yet.
Open on longform.asmartbear.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. How do I run good discovery calls in India when the person keeps saying yes to be polite but never converts?

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