Listen kid, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but customers are not always the end-all in the startup equation, especially at the beginning. There’s another, more important step to consider first.

And that starts with the idea.

In just about any location outside of the Valley, startups are automatically penalized in terms of their value by putting them all up against the customer yardstick. In other words, here in the Triangle, and in a lot of other places, it has become not just the norm, but the only way to judge the inherent value of a startup.

I’m not going to trash that line of thinking. I believe in it, and it’s the right thing to do. If we’re going to start talking about our location as a potential epicenter of startup activity (and this applies to the Triangle as it applies to Des Moines as it applies to Fargo), we’ll need a bunch of startups with a bunch of customers, sure.

But if we’re continually the tortoise to the Valley’s hare, we can’t just keep cranking out turtles.

You don’t need a Subway on every corner.

Let’s get something straight first. I’m not telling you to ignore customers. I’ve actually been screaming in the customer-first chorus for the last ten years. Go get customers first. Then once you’ve done that, go get customers again. I truly believe that. And I have no argument with the fact that, for startups, customers always equals value, but the opposite — the corollary – that value always equals customers, that isn’t always true.

Value isn’t just about customers, it just happens to be the most easily identifiable measure of value. Anyone can point to a startup’s customers and see the value. Oh look, that startup has customers, that startup has revenue, that revenue is recurring, that startup has value.

My kids can do that. Although it should be noted that my kids all have their own businesses. A couple VCs are sniffing around my six-year-old’s online comic book. But seriously, he’s still just ripping off xkcd, only with better art.

The Real Value

By the time those experts have deemed a startup worthy, it’s too late. Honestly. That vision is already on its way to realization, and the risk (and thus the return) is minimal — unless you sink a lot of money into a pivot, blow the whole thing up, and start alienating a bunch of current customers in the hopes of landing a bigger bunch of potential customers. Which puts you right back at square one again, and you still haven’t identified the value.

The ability to identify a pre-customer startup with value, which is the real valuable value, takes experience and talent. And it takes an entrepreneurial mindset. If you can do this as an entrepreneur, identify the idea that’s going to have pre-customer value, then you’re going to feel an awful lot better about sweating out the six-month-to-six-year period in which you have to convert that idea into customer revenue.

I fear, at times, that we’re taking lean startup and minimum viable product too far, especially for startups in these outside-the-Valley locations that come into the world pre-penalized. Too many times, I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs throwing garbage at a wall (and, more disappointingly, at customers) to see what will stick. The market is not the place to A/B test your business idea, it’s where you A/B test features.

If you’re not 100% sure your idea has merit before you take it to customers, you need to pick another idea.

Know the Sector

I’ve also seen a rash of entrepreneurs trying very optimistically to disrupt a sector they know absolutely nothing about. Being able to code a sweet mobile app gives zero indication of how valuable that app will be to the restaurant industry (and I’m not picking on anyone, you can substitute whatever industry you like).

Have you waited tables? Do you have a passion for this cut-throat, slim margin, high-risk life-decision of a career path? I mean more than just “I like to eat out” or “I’m a bit of a foodie.” Have you been a part of the carnage that consumes the vast majority of new restaurants? Do you know the magic bullet of success, and can you make that magic bullet more accessible?

I’m not saying you need ten years of industry experience before you sic technology on it to make it work better, but you do need a foothold.

I’m passionate about a lot of things, but at the top of my list are artificial intelligence (I’m that geek, baby), data science, writing, and sports. If you put all of those things into some kind of random startup generator, 99 times out of 100 it will churn out Automated Insights, where you can find me every day (that last time it will spit out “Moneyball,” these generators are not perfect).

On the other hand, I literally have no business in the healthcare business where, admittedly, I started my career. I can also tell you, sheepishly, that it’s the only industry in which I told the only client I’ve ever told that they were so screwed up I could not help them.

Look champ, the customer is king, there’s no denying that. But the ability to get to customers first and to get to customers quickly is not the path every startup needs to follow. Always start with the great idea, one you believe in and one you believe will work, then validate that idea against the market.

In other words, the customer always knows what they want, but if they knew how to get there, they wouldn’t need you.

Editor’s note: Joe Procopio is a serial entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. He is VP of Product at Automated Insights and the founder of startup network and news resource ExitEvent. Follow him at @jproco or read him at http://joeprocopio.com