A "tollbooth" strategy is not theoretical; it's discovered by reverse-engineering your quickest sales. Interviewing customers who bought fast reveals common "demand triggers"—the external events forcing them to seek a solution. This repeatable trigger then becomes your company's strategic focus.

When a startup finally uncovers true customer demand, their existing product, built on assumptions, is often the wrong shape. The most common pattern is for these startups to burn down their initial codebase and rebuild from scratch to perfectly fit the newly discovered demand.

Technical founders often create a perfect solution to a real problem but still fail. That's because problem-solution fit is useless without product-market fit. An elegant solution that isn't plugged into the market—with the right GTM, pricing, and messaging—solves nothing in practice. It's unheard and unseen.

Using a child's toy analogy, demand is a pre-existing hole (e.g., a star shape) and your product is the block. Founders fail when they build a block and then search for a hole it fits. The real job is to first deeply understand the shape of the hole, then craft a block that fits it perfectly.

Product-market fit can be accidental. Even companies with millions in ARR may not initially understand *why* customers buy. They must retroactively apply frameworks to uncover the true demand drivers, which is critical for future growth, replication in new segments, and avoiding wrong turns.

Founders often try to build scalable "tollbooth" pipelines (e.g., content, targeted ads) too early. This is a mistake because the specific customer demand is still unknown. A tollbooth strategy is only effective after achieving 5-10 nearly identical customer wins, which provides the necessary conviction and data to target the right moment of need.