I tried over and over to explain to other founders that they REALLY should think about sales early. I'd try to say "Ok imagine your product is done magically. It works great. Now what?"
And it was interesting to see them struggle to think of what they would actually do if it was done.
If you reach out and get customers interested, but you delivery is delayed, don't you risk burning credibility?
(The exception is companies that are glorified consultancies, eg. you have just one customer that needs a very specific service done. But these are eliminated once you've triangulated enough to find 10 or so customers. At that point your product is general enough that it will no longer appeal to the companies that just want custom development outsourced.)
Otherwise you’ll be under such stress that you’ll become reactive and lose your Birds Eye View, and that’s a slow way to sink.
But in reality, as long as you're somewhat honest in the sales process, it'll still work out better to talk to potential customers as early as possible. Maybe the dogma has changed, but doesn't YC say to talk to your early users/customers as early as possible, and if you dont have anyone like that to talk to, how are you even building this thing you have no connection to?
Yes, you can have whales that fuck you up, or bad feedback, or whatever, but at the end of the day a lot more folks end up siloing worrying about initial impressions, run out of money, build something nobody cares about anyway, and then they get to START at "let's go build what people actually will buy"