Post by Tebogo Phasha

“The doers are the major thinkers.” — Steve Jobs The first time I heard this quote, it didn’t really land. I just went on with my life and never thought much about it. But when I started working on startups, I began to understand what it truly means. When you think of an idea in your head, it feels perfect. You ask yourself, Why wouldn’t people want this? It seems like the perfect idea. Then you realize that great ideas only come after people test your product and challenge your assumptions. In most cases, business ideas have blind spots because they are created from what Peter Thiel calls uninformed optimism. You believe strongly in your idea, but you don’t yet know what you don’t know. The goal is to move from uninformed optimism to informed optimism. Brian Armstrong, the founder of Coinbase, once said that the people who are the best in the world specialize in getting really good at the questions they don’t know. For me, this is what I’m wrestling with today while building Kalafo. Which questions should I be asking to make sure that what we’re building is what people truly want? And how can we make sure that we deliver what people want in the most efficient way possible? Like Steve Jobs said, for me to get to those answers, I should start by doing.