By Georgina Joy Read
There’s a dangerous idea in business: if you build it, they will come. It is a popularized sayings – but, it is too narrow. I used to believe it too — until I realised as I was building my business, I was building for myself, not for anyone else.
Last week, Serial entrepreneur Daniel Priestly was in Cape Town and I attended his talk. He gave 7 key insights to entrepreneurship. The first key insight hit me hardest: as entrepreneurs, we focus on supply, not demand. We obsess over what we can make, offer, or sell. We polish our product, design our logos, write our websites all before checking if anyone actually cares. We focus on supply. But what about demand? Who actually wants it? What if anything are people prepared to pay for it? We sink huge amounts of money before we’ve even tested the market.
The Hard Truth: Most Startups Fail
Globally, about 90% of startups fail. In South Africa, the failure rate is around 86% — among the highest in the world. (DemandSage https://www.demandsage.com/startupstatistics/) The leading reason? A lack of demand or poor product–market fit. According to industry research, 34% of startups fold because their product or service fails to meet actual market demand, while a CB Insights analysis indicates that 42% of startups fail simply because there was no real need for what they built (https://engenesis.com/a/one-reason-up-to-42-of-startups-fail). Many entrepreneurs, myself included, have fallen into this trap. And yet, entrepreneurs keep repeating the same pattern. We start with our own vision, our product, our passion. We supply. But demand isn’t about us. Why do we keep making this mistake? Psychology may offer an answer.
The Psychology of Self-Focus
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, spoke of archetypes: universal patterns that drive human behaviour. One of them is the Creator. The Creator archetype longs to bring something new into the world — to shape, design, and invent.
But the shadow side of the Creator is self-absorption: I want to make this because I feel it’s important. Jung described the Creator as visionary, but often blind to external realities. Entrepreneurs embody this too — focusing inward when they should be listening outward.
In other words, we are showing the world what we want – but we are not listening to what the world wants. And entrepreneurship is supposed to be all about solving problems!
From Supply to Demand
Imagine if we started from the other side? Do business plans, coaches, start-up incubators all have embedded in them surveys and questions about what people actually want? Too often, these tools under-emphasise testing demand…
- Instead of “What can I build?” ask “What are people already asking for?”
- Instead of “How do I explain my benefits?” ask “What problems are keeping them
up at night?” - Instead of pushing supply, learn to pull demand.
The trouble is we often do this in our own heads, assuming we know how people think. That’s ego talking again.
This is where marketing changes shape. For decades, marketing sold benefits. Faster, cheaper, better. But today’s entrepreneur faces audiences that are overloaded with choices and information. Marketing isn’t just about listing product benefits. Demand generation is about creating interest and desire — often through content, tools, or ideas that resonate deeply with unarticulated needs.
You create the demand — tapping into desire, curiosity, or even discomfort. Demand creation says: you didn’t know you needed this, but now you can’t imagine living without it. HubSpot pioneered the inbound marketing model —HubSpot describes demand generation as marketing that sparks interest long before someone is ready to buy — often through free tools, education, or content. Apple did it with the iPhone. Netflix did it with streaming. Local business Yoco did it with card machines for small business – solving problems people hadn’t yet articulated. It is a perspective shift to consider that we can curate demand. This is the key to better marketing – curate the demand for your product. AI can help you.
The Role of AI in Listening
Here’s where I get excited. In my own work building PocketCoach™, a WhatsApp-based AI coaching companion, I see how technology is making demand easier to detect, and marketing easier to direct.
AI strips away ego by focusing on data.
- What are people searching for?
- What questions keep repeating?
- Where are the gaps in knowledge, service, or support?
AI can help us listen more deeply, map demand more clearly, and test ideas more quickly than ever before. It doesn’t replace the human entrepreneur, but it strips away the noise of our ego so we can see what’s really wanted. Technology can show us demand, but only entrepreneurs can act on it.
How Entrepreneurs Can Flip the Script
- Listen before you build. In the excitement of getting going, we need to spend
time in conversations, forums, and communities. Don’t pitch. Ask. - Prototype demand. Run small tests before committing resources. If no one
bites, learn why. - Drop the “my.” Stop saying my product, my brand, my vision. Start saying the
market, the customer, the need. - Tell stories that curate demand. Instead of listing benefits, tell stories that
make your audience feel seen and understood.
Closing Thought
We all start with our own story. But business only works when that story becomes useful to others. Profit is not found in building what you want. It’s found in creating what others can’t live without.
