The situation
I spoke recently with a cofounder building a health focused display technology. The founder shared this story because they thought other hardware founders in the network might learn from it.
The company started from a personal problem. Both founders had experienced health challenges they believed were connected to the lighting, screens, and environments they spent most of their day around. What started as individual frustration became years of research, experimentation, and prototype development.
As they started talking about what they were building, people began finding them.
Some heard them on podcasts. Others came through health and wellness communities. Some had been searching for alternatives for years. Many simply wanted to know when they could buy the product.
Over time, a waitlist started to form.
The plan
For a long time, the plan was to continue building awareness, keep talking to potential users, and raise capital to keep moving the technology forward.
The founders spent a significant amount of time building relationships within the communities that understood the problem firsthand. They attended events, participated in accelerator programs, spoke on podcasts, and focused on getting in as many relevant conversations as possible.
As momentum grew, they raised angel funding, expanded the team, and invested in a more complete prototype. They wanted something they could put in front of industry professionals and larger companies who might otherwise dismiss the concept entirely.
That eventually led them to a major industry trade show where they were able to demonstrate the technology publicly and begin conversations with larger organizations.
Where uncertainty remained
The company wasn't struggling to find interest, the challenge was that the interest was coming from many different directions.
As the waitlist grew, the founders started noticing that the people showing up weren't all looking for the same thing.
Some were parents looking for healthier technology for their families, and others were professionals spending most of their day in front of screens. Some were deeply involved in health and wellness communities. Others had simply reached a point where existing solutions weren't working for them.
The interest was encouraging, but it made the next decision harder. The company had evidence that people cared about the problem, but not clarity around which customer should shape the business.
What needed to be proven first
New opportunities started appearing. Conversations with larger display manufacturers led to discussions around partnerships. Venture groups and strategic investors started showing interest.
Possibilities that hadn't been part of the original plan suddenly felt realistic.
The founders found themselves balancing two ideas at once: on one side was the growing community that had helped validate the opportunity from the beginning, and on the other side were larger organizations that might accelerate the path to market.
The challenge was understanding where to focus first:
- Which customer had the most urgent need?
- Which message resonated most?
- Which path would create the strongest foundation for the company?
The pattern
This kind of situation comes up fairly often in hardware. A growing audience creates confidence as well as choices.
As more people become interested, it's easy to assume the next step is simply reaching more of them. In reality, the harder question is often deciding which group deserves the majority of your attention.
The broader the audience becomes, the more important that decision tends to be.
If you're in a different spot
If you're building demand around a new product, it can be useful to ask whether you're learning that people are interested, or learning who you're actually building for.
Those are often different questions.