By tradition, every first day of the month I open hunted.space and scroll back through previous years. Today, I checked October 2024 and what I saw was fascinating.

Unlike September 2024 (which was crazy strong in 2024: six products over 1000 upvotes, 6 more than 900 upvotes and more than ten over 800), October looked very different.

Only one single product passed 1000 upvotes: bolt.new (with exactly 1003) which has been performing brilliantly and organized the largest online hackathon a few months ago.

I'm stuck in the exhausting loop of building a product, shipping it, and then nothing. After my last launch ended with zero users and zero revenue, I realized I am hiding from the most critical work: acquiring customers.

I was discussing this with a friend who's a successful founder, and he told me most of us are "building backwards." He said we obsess over code and features (the fun part), but neglect the sales and marketing, which is where startups actually live or die.

His suggested solution: Start with a white-label product.

His why: