Ask HN: When do you know it's time to pivot? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: When do you know it's time to pivot?

4 pointsApane3 comments

I’ve been working on my startup for just over 12 months now and I’ve invested quite a bit of capital and I’m at a point where I’m not sure if I should continue building it out or pivot. It's a marketplace web-app and I've been able to sign-up 5 vendors on the supply side which took 3 months (but I chalk it up to not being that great at sales). And haven't done much demand side marketing yet as I've been focused on product and want to build organic SEO rather than spend $ on SEM. Anyways, it's been a really long and expensive ride and without getting feedback from demand side users it's tough/discouraging at times.

I’d like to hear from successful founders who have found product market fit when and how they knew it was working.

According to the 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries in simple over view of when to pivot:

"If the company is making good progress toward the ideal, that means it’s learning appropriately and using that learning effectively, in which case it makes sense to continue. If not, the management team eventually must conclude that its current product strategy is flawed and needs a serious change. When a company pivots, it starts the process all over again, reestablishing a new baseline and then tuning the engine from there. The sign of a successful pivot is that these engine-tuning activities are more productive after the pivot than before."

So basically you have a market place but few or no customers to pay you, or your suppliers? Organic SEO is fine, if it's happening, but if it's not, you need to make it happen. If you have demand customers, reach out to a sample of them individually, and ask them what brought them there, and for any suggestions for you to consider that would make you easier for them to recommend to friends/colleagues.

I think you should pivot if you find that what you assumed of your customers is no longer true.

From what I read here that may not be the case, and looks like it is probably a matter of sales/marketing.

Also two sides markets are hard

Just my 2c

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