I have never written here and not entirely sure the best way to do this, but I'd like to share something I learned recently by both doing and listening.

It appears that a lot of people, including myself, have come up with an idea and immediately built a landing page to ask for funding.

This is generally a bad idea.

You want to come up with an idea, find a team of people who can make it happen, ChatGPT, Claude, Bolt, whatever, these all count as a team. Build a working product, not perfect, just make it work. Go to market with it, nobody remembers when Google launched and they won't remember when you did either. Just launch, get a few users, and now you are ready to get funding. Only after you've seen people actually want it should you invest more time and money into making it better. Investors follow shortly after.

So, short: 1. Idea 2. Team 3. Working product 4. Users 5. Investors (YC for example)

To put some pressure on this...

Apple: 1. Affordable personal computer 2. Jobs & Woz 3. Apple 1 4. ByteShop & friends 5. Mike Markkula

Zip2: 1. An online directory + city maps, listings, and nav for newspapers. 2. Kimbal & Greg Kouri 3. Global Link Information Network (original product) 4. The New York Times Company, Knight Ridder and Hearst Corporation. 5. Mohr Davidow Ventures