How Do You Evaluate Yourself Before Your Business Makes Money?

I used to be a developer, then a team lead. I had a reasonably clear idea of where I was going and how well I was doing.

Of course, I had impostor syndrome. But I could argue with it. I had experience, a salary, a job title, feedback from colleagues, and the results of past projects. I could compare my doubts with the facts and get at least some sense of my own value.

Tetri is different. It’s my first public product, and now I have to do everything.

I look for payment providers, deal with legal questions, design interfaces, write copy, handle support, work on SEO, and make motion graphics. I used to watch specialists do this work and occasionally contribute. Now I make the decisions.

There are plenty of tools to help. They can draft copy, create an animation, or prepare a legal document. But a tool doesn’t give you expertise. I can end up with a finished result and still have no idea whether it’s any good.

Code can be tested, reviewed, and judged by whether the system works. Copy, design, and marketing are harder to assess. If something produces no results, did I do it badly, or does it simply need more time? If a user says nothing, does that mean everything was fine? Or did they just leave?

A founder should have a simple measure of success: profit. If people pay for the product and the business can sustain itself, you’ve created something valuable.

But what do you do before there’s any profit?

Almost any intermediate result can be explained away. There are no users because the product hasn’t launched yet. Users aren’t paying because it’s too early. They aren’t coming back because the onboarding isn’t finished. Development took too long because I wanted to do things properly.

Any of these explanations could be true. That’s the problem.

Until there’s money, I try to look for signals that are harder to explain away: someone other than me uses the product, people come back, notice when something breaks, ask for new features, or recommend Tetri to others. The next step is whether they’re willing to pay.

That still isn’t profit, but it is contact with reality.

For now, I can’t honestly say whether I’m a good founder. I can only evaluate how I work. Do I put the product in front of users? Do I pay attention to uncomfortable signals? Do I test my assumptions? Am I hiding in development to avoid the work that makes me feel incompetent?

I used to wonder whether I was good enough at my profession. Now I’m not even sure what my profession is.

Maybe there is no more honest answer until the business starts making money.