Essay

The wallet test

Everyone loves your product right up until it’s time to open their wallet. In the interview, in the demo, in the group chat, people are generous. “This would change how we work.” “I’d definitely use this.” “Sign me up.” Then you send the actual invoice, or ask for a card, or name a price, and half of them go quiet.

That’s not a rejection. That’s information. It’s the most useful information you’ll get before you build anything.

Interest is nearly free to generate. Curiosity, politeness, and the desire to be encouraging will get you a room full of people who say yes to a survey. None of that tells you whether the thing you’re building solves a problem big enough that someone will trade money for it. Only a real transaction tells you that — and it doesn’t need to be a big one. A $1 deposit that someone actually pays is worth more than a hundred replies that say “sounds great.”

So before I let a team build anything heavy, I want a version of the wallet test run: a pre-order, a deposit, a waitlist with a card on file, a scoped paid pilot — something where saying yes costs the customer something real. If people won’t part with a dollar today, they almost certainly won’t part with real budget once you’ve built the full thing. Better to find that out now, while the cost of being wrong is an afternoon, not two quarters of engineering.

This isn’t cynicism about your product. It’s respect for how expensive it is to build the wrong thing well. Skin in the game — theirs, not just yours — is the only signal I trust enough to build on.