By committing to building BEFORE you know what to build, you may have invested a lot of time to just get "NO". Stop what you're doing right now and go and talk to 20 people who might be customers and DO NOT PITCH them. Find out their problems and explore from there.
You're saying "may have" but then advising them to throw it away and guarantee it was a waste of time? At least they can test it out. Learning from mistakes requires feedback.
Rather than avoiding pitching at all costs, perhaps they could find more sympathetic advisers to evaluate their product then iterate from there. Like relatives or friendly small investors who know the business.
> advising them to throw it away and guarantee it was a waste of time?
I didn't say "throw it away" or make any guarantees, let alone claim it "was a waste of time." I didn't even use those words so I suspect you're responding to someone else.
Regardless, he needs to stop and figure out if he's pointing in the right direction. At the moment, he could be 1% correct or 99% correct but he doesn't know and THAT is his sole job atm.
By committing to building BEFORE you know what to build, you may have invested a lot of time to just get "NO". Stop what you're doing right now and go and talk to 20 people who might be customers and DO NOT PITCH them. Find out their problems and explore from there.