Most people make this fatal mistake starting a business [Video]

People who start a new business often make one “fatal mistake” that”ll likely doom their venture before it even starts, says Steve Blank.

The mistake: not researching your prospective customers or clients before deciding what kind of company you want to build, and the products or services you’ll offer. “[I’ve] seen this a million times,” says Blank, an adjunct professor at Stanford University who has written four books on the subject of entrepreneurship and helped build eight different tech startups, of which he co-founded four.

Coming up with an idea for a business first, and then determining how to sell that product or service — before you’ve confirmed it’s something your prospective customers actually desire, is a recipe for failure, Blank says.

“The most important [question] is: ‘Well, who are my customers?’ And the second one is: ‘What do they want?'” adds Blank, who sold his final startup, business software company Epiphany, …