It starts with one
One customer. One problem. One year.
One customer.
It starts with only one customer.
Talk with them to find the one problem you are willing to help them solve.
Be honest about what it will cost to serve that one customer.
Go on to serve that one customer. Once, and over again.
If you can generate cash flow from serving that one customer, and you can do that within a profitable margin, then you may be on to something.
Capital is cheap. But that's not an excuse to build a business that experiences a huge loss with each customer that it serves.
“We'll make money when we scale” is often not the best strategy when the unit costs don't add up.1
You can have a 100-year vision. But you need to make the first year work. Then the next year.
In the same way, you can aspire to serve over a million people, but you start by serving one person. Then the next person.
Serve them so well that they derive fulfillment from telling at least three of their friends about how your service helped them.
PS: I'm yet to build a billion-dollar company, so process this with that in mind.