The single hardest problem in startups
There’s never a perfect answer for most situations you’ll run into as a founder. You’ll get reasonable sounding advice that is wrong on every major decision. But there are a set of frameworks and experiences you can borrow and apply to your situation.
Except. When you are pre-product market fit, and you need to decide: do you keep going, pivot 5 degrees or pivot 90 degrees?
That’s the singlest hardest problem in startups. Because there’s no good answer.
You can always make the case that a bit more polishing, adding one more feature, reaching out to ten more customers, signing one more deal, that’s what it will take. Inch-by-inch. And sometimes that’s true.
But other times, no amount of the grinding you’ve been praised for will get you there. Sometimes you just need to make a big change - take a learning you had or a customer you discovered, or a random new idea, and just all go in. Sometimes that works. Or maybe you’ve given up a massive headstart for something shiny and new.
But here’s the thing. There is no framework that works to decide. Not a single good piece of advice I can offer. Theory doesn’t get you anywhere.
I can judge the inputs, what you’re hearing from customers, confirm that’s not product market fit, or suggest areas to lean into. That’s a skill you can learn.
But it’s an intuition game. If it wasn’t, founders would be a lot less valuable. We could Mckinsey our way to Figma (grind) or Slack (90 degree pivot) or Netflix (5 degree pivot).
So good luck on your hardest problem. I can’t offer anything else from where I am standing.