So You Built It and They Didn't Come. Now What?

When you look at all of the innovation that has been added to the world in just the last one hundred years, it is absolutely astounding how far we've come. Start-ups endeavor to capture that innovation and make its benefits available to those whose lives will be forever improved by it.

Yes, there can be great wealth and fame for those intrepid entrepreneurs who dare beyond the dream, to actual execution. But there is also great risk and no guarantees.

Today the barriers to starting a company are almost too low and that can seduce an entrepreneur to build without truly thinking the idea through to its rightful conclusion.

It's just full speed ahead - of the competition even
when there isn't any.

It's millions of investment dollars spent on a product
with no customers yet.

It's build it and they will come.

Well, what if they didn't come? What are you going to do now? What can you do?

This is a far different situation than when you were driving the original idea, selling the vision, seeking and getting the intoxicating "Wow's", when everyone would talk to you and everyone was chasing you to share his or her sage.

But when you've built it and they didn't come, when you have that epiphany that maybe they aren't ever coming, when the buzz and the fervor turn into fear, uncertainty and doubt, where do you turn?

I had no trouble finding total strangers with whom the title of this book resonated. I would tell them I was writing a book "So You Built It and They Didn't Come. Now What?" and they would just smile from ear to ear. Then they would immediately start to tell me their own stories of start-ups that stumbled; whether it was one they worked at, their relatives worked at, they bought from or sold to or read about; there was no one that didn't have a personal experience to share.

Well I've accepted that I can't get to every start-up's CEO before he builds a product with no orders for it. He wouldn't listen anyway as most are too busy building to listen then. But what I can do is help him figure out his Now What? when it happens. This book is not about theory. It's true stories with practical advice on what to do next.

Getting it right creates jobs, provides for the future of the families involved, brings products to the world that can forever improve lives and bring benefits to our global economy. It is with great courage that these Executives so candidly have shared their own true stories of how they came to their Now What moment and what they did to get it right. No one told them, now they openly will tell you:

I hope, as we all do, that you never need this book. But if you do, know that you aren't the first and you aren't alone. We're all here to tell you what no one else would tell us.