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Why building a marketplace website isn't solving the real problem

Mandeep Singh, an angel investor and co-founder and former CEO at Trouva on Riding Unicorns · Markeplaces, hard truths and angel investing with Mandeep...

“So I guess they treated it a bit like field of dreams.”

3:54 / 4:09

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What do you mean? Yeah. Build a website. Right? So I guess they treated it a bit like field of dreams. Right? You know, build it and they will come. So it was that insight we got to relatively quickly, which was that we were kind of solving a problem they didn't have. The real problem was lack of scale. You know, if you're an independent

About this clip

Mandeep Singh explains how Trouva initially misunderstood their customers' needs by building a website solution when the real problem independent retailers faced was lack of scale, not lack of digital presence. He uses the 'Field of Dreams' analogy to describe the common startup mistake of building something without validating the actual problem.

Why this clip

This captures a classic founder realization moment about misunderstanding customer problems, which is highly relatable for startup audiences.

3:54 - 4:0916sfounder story
problem-validationmarketplace-dynamicsstartup-mistakes

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