Ask HN: how do you decide when to quit, stick or pivot | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: how do you decide when to quit, stick or pivot

21 pointsbandhunt18 comments

The single hardest question in the startup world for me is, when to quit/pivot/stick.

1. Stick (keep pushing forward; it's too early to quit) 2. Pivot (change the product, but stay in the same industry) 3. Quit

I'm thinking of putting my recently relaunched startup iSound.com back to side project status - which essentially means quitting (at least as a business).

Most great companies take years to build, so is moving on after a few months myopic?

The numbers tell me to move on and so does my gut. I've been doing startups for 6 years with some success so it's not a work ethic thing. I actually have a problem (to a fault) quitting before something is "done."

How do you personally decide when to quit/pivot etc?

PS: The book "the dip" by seth godin and is about this, but I didn't find it helpful.

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You should change your idea when you (a) have new one you're convinced is better, and (b) it won't cost too much to switch to it (e.g. because it overlaps a lot with your current idea).

Harder to say when to quit. I suppose you quit when you can't take it anymore. Which means deciding that depends less on the product than on you.

I don't think it's a good idea to just quit if you have a new idea that you think is better. I say this from experience. A few months back I was convinced that we should drop our iPhone apps because we weren't passionate about them. We weren't making that good of money on them either. I was really passionate about a book sharing website (shower idea that you wrote about) and I wanted to devote my efforts to it.

Fast forward to now, had I have made that move, it would have literally cost me thousands - as the apps are really gaining traction. I blogged about the book sharing website twice and it seemed to generate little interest.

My criteria would be: a) If you aren't getting ANY traction in a predetermined period b) when you talk/write/tweet/blog/speak about your idea or product and very little seem interested, it might be time to quit or pivot. My 2 cents.

Change your standard for being convinced that another idea is better, and pg's heuristic would have worked in your situation.

Also (c) when your idea isn't working out.

We're undergoing a massive internal change that's pretty much akin to starting an entirely new business within a business, simply because what we're doing has less potential growth than what we're looking at doing, which is new (which is rare in our industry).

PG, what would you do if you already had a profitable, slowly growing product that was based on a mediocre idea, and two new ideas:

  A good idea with low diversification costs
  A great idea with high diversification costs

I say diversification costs, primarily time and focus, instead of switching costs because the first product will still be maintained and grown, not abandoned.

Depends on your goals. If you just want to make a good living with the least stress, change nothing. If you're more ambitious, try the great idea.

Thanks!

For me it's a 3 step process.

1. Make it, release it, drive 2,000 hits to the site, see conversions. If there are 0 conversions, then the idea is probably crap. If not, I try to optimize and drive another 2,000 hits to it.

2. If I get down to 1:200...then it's probably a good idea. The next step is to see if there is scale. A product that converts at 1:7 is not viable if the entire possible traffic is only 70 a month.

3. If I get a product that a) converts and b) has a lot of potential traffic, the next step is to see competition. If each click costs $5 and the first page of Google results for the relevant keywords is filled with high ranking websites...then I look at the profit margin to make sure I can afford to compete.

Essentially this makes sure that the product can be both profitable and has scale.

If there is low competition but no scale...it might still be a viable side project. Low competition = very easy to get to top of Google...so it might still be good for an extra $1-2K/mo with only a few hours spent a month on maintenance.

Thanks! I have gone through a similar process.

I have to admit, I have been going on for years and years because I can see that it will work, no matter how much I hate it at a particular moment. I can't claim that this is the best approach, or even a good one, but that's what I'm doing: not quitting. I guess it's not really a decision. In the past, a free competitor caused me to quit - but that was a mistake, because mine was still valued, so I unquit that project (but I was uninspired, so I focussed on the next one - I guess inspiration is another factor).

You need information to make these decisions. I like Steve Blank's idea that your startup is a process for finding answers to questions, like here's my idea, I think these people will need it - do they? Try to get this information as early as possible - before version 1.0, before version 0.1, before any version, before any planning or design. Some questions will require a version 0.1 to find the answer.

So, try to formulate the specific questions, that if you had factual answers to them, it would be obvious to you whether to stick/pivot/quit. Then work at obtaining those facts (instead of at "keep pushing forward".) Some of them, by their nature, might take a long time or a lot of work to obtain; but because they are concrete, specific and factual, it's easier for you to decide whether it's worth finding the answer or not. Or, just by thinking in these terms, a brilliant short-cut for getting this information might come to you. [Note: I haven't actually talked to customers, which his approach says to; but I have researched my questions in other ways, which was very revealing.]

Some startups also have engineering questions, is this technologically feasible, can I get this to work? A similar approach applies, where you try to solve the bare essence of the problem first; customers can't tell you about this aspect. [Note: I do this all the time; unfortunately the basic "is it usable?" question can require a substantial prototype - a lot of work]

I agree. Inspiration is a big factor. I have hard numbers based on 50K users of where I think this can go; I just struggle with not finishing things.

Good luck with your deal! Pandora took 10 years to be where it is, so it's obviously the right thing to do in some cases.

I feel for you... There's the general problem of when to call it quits and then there's your particular startup.

I would have to say that in my opinion working in the music industry is a tar pit. (I used to work at a major label) Because of the legal issues surrounding copyright law, the upsides are limited. In the case where you are successful, you will usually get shut down by either one of the labels, all of the labels and/or RIAA. Look at Muxtape if you want an example.

I usually use the analogy of a concert... you want to be close to the stage and you see an area really close that's free so you start making your way over there. Once you get there you see there's something wrong with it. Either it's behind a pillar or there's people sitting on the ground there, or someone's puked there.

This happens to music startups all the time. They see the need in the market and they go to fill it in, but the lawyers have puked all over the ground there.

haha, nice analogy! Yeah, the music industry has extra hurdles for sure.

:-) I hope I didn't sound too negative about your startup... I just think you have to put a lot of thought into exit strategy when you're doing something in music.

Did the people who have achieved the success you expect do more or less work than you've done ?

"I expected at least 20 sign ups by now", "I expected at least 100 visits a day by now", "I expected at least $1000 a month by now".

Try and find out what other people had to do to get to those milestones, if you have done a lot less then perhaps you should push on, if you've done a lot more, maybe your on the wrong track.

A rough heuristic but better than gut feel, perhaps.

I would honestly look at your idea from a strategic and straight business perspective. Can you create something or have the secret sauce that is defensible and hard to copy from competitors? If your isound.com provides something that is a great product market fit and a secret sauce that is defensible I would stick with the product. But make sure the business is covered in terms of there is a real need and people are willing to pay for it. Distribution is very important. Most internet companies fail because of lack of distribution and people just don't know you exist. So if you have a killer product, business fundamentals look good, and you just need to put more effort in marketing and distribution then I would totally continue.

2. Pivot is a hard question because you need to know your customer. I would say totally question and understand what the customers need is and if your product meets well and do the same thing with information that you gathered that tells you that you shohuld pivot it. Basically question your product market fit and information that you have to prove it. Ask why 5 times in row.

Taking this decision depends on the context of the question. Do you have customers/revenue? What is the feedback you received so far? How does your P&L statement look like? :)

My take on this:

I stick if I have "some" customers/revenue and "some" positive feedback.

Pivot should be influenced by feedback (if I have any) and by the experience of the market (again, if I have any), provided costs can be sustained.

Quit if I accomplished nothing yet and there are little chances to make any revenue/profit in an established time frame. It's hard to give up on stuff you built and invested in and it gets harder the more you invest.

PS: I have my own company for some (5) years now and I have seen good and bad times.

I got over a dip - about 10 minutes ago. For the last 2 months I had what seemed like an unsurmountable technical problem. Well, it was surmountable but I really didn't believe in the business enough to go through all the steps to fix the problem. Well after an expresso this morning I just solved it and now I feel like I can take on the world - I don't really care if the business idea is that good anymore because, by fixing this problem, I feel I have something valuable.

If you've been working on something for 6 years you've definitely got something valuable. I recommend that you don't quit.

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