The suppliers you work with to build your technology startup are not your friends.
They run their own businesses, and they will happily accept your money and custom, even if there are fundamental problems with your business or product.
There are two ways this happens. Either the supplier does not see the red flags that you’re innocently waving in their directions, or they do and they need to put food on the table.
They will still onboard you as a customer, and you will pay their invoices and leak cash in their direction.
The problem is that it’s easy to get carried away and start to believe that spending money and making progress in building is a proxy for genuine forward motion within the business – just by having someone beavering away building the software, or putting the marketing strategy together, it feels like things are moving, when really all you’re doing is “being economically productive”, but not in a way that’s very helpful to you.
Be wary of the fact that buying anything from a supplier is very, very similar to paying someone to be your friend. * NEED TO ADD SOME WORDS *