Markus has built much of the technology he envisions, but not what he thinks is a complete product - one that would make it dramatically easier to build mobile browser-based applications that rival native apps, including extreme responsiveness and the ability to run offline. He has four potential customers in place, and when pressed hard he agrees that two of them might pay for the product as-is. Predictably, I advised him to drop the current enhancement plans and to get those customers on board, to ensure he has real market feedback and a good story for investors; for one thing, it might be that he has a wonderful product that's going to solve customer problems in 2017, but that the market just isn't ready for it yet. He has already signed up for three months' consulting with another potential customer, but as this will not be related directly to his product and won't provide feedback on real usage, I encouraged him strongly to sign up at least one of the current group and begin getting feedback. However, Markus feels strongly he needs to complete more of the product to make it marketable and that signing up customers now would be counterproductive. My stories about people who've been burnt very badly by over-tuning their products didn't make much of dent in his opinion - and of course I may easily be wrong, as I don't know his business at all - so in the end we agreed to disagree.
Markus and a potential key hire both have personal ties to the US (New York and Boston, specifically), so a move there might be helpful for both of them. Further, Markus wonders whether he will find better funding in San Francisco than in London, where the business is located now (along with the potential customers he has located so far). I suggested that he was likely to get the best advice and pre-revenue investment opportunities in the Valley, but that there was no need for his company to be located there to get SV angel interest. I suggested he consider the risks of a US move carefully, as he wants to target finance and has contacts in London but not in the US - this industry is very much a closed shop so if you don't already know people it can be very hard to sell into.