Meet Mike. You Might Recognise Him.
Mike had a great idea. A marketplace for tiny houses in the Netherlands. He spent six months building it, working every weekend and holiday. The platform half-worked. He hadn’t shown it to anyone.
So he hired an external vendor, burned through his savings, and spent another three to six months polishing every screen and every flow. Launch day came. A LinkedIn post. “Congrats!” His mum shared it.
Week one: zero customers. Month one: zero customers. Month two: a few signups. They left. The feedback? “It’s too complex.” “I don’t understand what it does.” “Why would I use this instead of Airbnb?”
Twelve months. €50,000 spent. Zero paying customers. Nicko’s point was simple: Mike is not a bad founder. Mike just did everything in the wrong order.
The €3 Alternative
Nicko had an annoyance, not just an idea. At networking events, exchanging contacts was overcomplicated and he was tired of it. So he bought a €3 NFC card from Bol.com. It arrived the next day. He spent one weekend writing code: no login, no payments, no pitch deck. A working proof of concept, nothing more.
He used it himself at an event in Amsterdam. Someone saw it happen, understood it immediately, and wanted it. Forty-eight hours later: ten paying customers.
Mike: 12 months, €50,000, zero customers. Nicko: one weekend, €3, ten customers in under five days.
Why 42% of Startups Never Find a Single Customer
According to CBS Insights research cited in the talk, 42% of startups fail because there was no market need. They built something nobody wanted to buy. Running out of money is the symptom, not the cause.
The pattern Nicko sees at Codelevate every week is the same: founders who mistake movement for progress and perfectionism for a strategy.
