Does tech need a duty of care?
Short answer: too often in tech, someone with an idea gets a quote, pays a deposit and gets built for, without anyone asking if they’re ready. I don’t think tech needs more regulation. I do think it needs more duty of care: check the client is ready before you take their money. Today that’s easier than ever, because AI, a simple website and social media can test a market before anyone writes code.
What I saw in financial planning
I started my career in financial services. Over the years I watched financial planning in Australia get more and more regulated. After the Royal Commission, adviser numbers fell from about 28,000 in 2018 (UNSW, citing Adviser Ratings) to about 15,500 by late 2025 (Money Management, citing Padua Wealth Data). That’s almost half. A lot of good people left the industry.
The rules came because too many clients were sold things that weren’t right for them. Advisers now have to understand a client’s situation before they recommend anything.
What’s missing in tech
In tech, nobody has to ask. A business owner with an idea can get a quote, pay a deposit and have a developer or agency start building the same week.
Nobody stops to ask the obvious questions:
- Has anyone said they’ll pay for this?
- Is there a real business case?
- Is building it now the right call, or would an existing tool do?
- Are you actually ready for this?
I’m not saying we need to add regulation to the sector. But more of us need to be conscious of our clients and look after them, rather than blindly taking money without understanding their situation.
What duty of care looks like
From a lean point of view, my rule is simple: sell it first, then build.
That means a simple offer, real people paying for it, and delivering the result by hand behind the scenes at first. If nobody buys, you’ve saved the build. If they do, you know exactly what to build.
It’s been done by hand before
Some of the best-known startups started this way.
- Zappos. Before holding any stock, founder Nick Swinmurn photographed shoes in local stores and put them on a website. When someone ordered, he went back to the store, bought the pair at full price and shipped it himself. The question he was testing was simple: will people buy shoes online? (Spryker)
- Food on the Table. Manuel Rosso started his meal-planning service with one customer and one grocery store, building each plan by hand before any software existed. Eric Ries calls this a concierge MVP in The Lean Startup. (Kromatic)
Neither of them built the product first. They proved people would pay, then built.
Use AI to test, not just to build
You don’t even need to do it all by hand anymore. AI, a simple website and social media can test whether a market is real, quickly and cheaply. That’s what they should be used for first.
AI can get you a demo in a weekend. It can’t tell you if anyone will pay. Use it to put the idea in front of real people and see what they do.
When to build
Building should only happen once you’ve actually validated it:
- a proper business case,
- real client validation,
- pre-sales, or
- investors putting money in.
Looking after your clients sometimes means telling them they’re not ready yet.
If you’re about to pay someone to build
If there’s a quote on your desk, the kit Before You Pay a Developer walks you through what to ask, what to check and what has to be in your name. If you want me to look at whether you’re ready, that’s what the Build Case is for.