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Comment by sircastor | Hacker News Reader

> so that you can get far enough to afford to pivot 1-2 times until you find product-market fit,

This line of reasoning has always felt so bizarre to me: try to start a business doing something you think is important and when you find it doesn’t work, try some other business until it does. I understand it as a response to things not working out as expected, but people go into business with this as a strategy.

I guess I’m just not that type of person.

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I think its a distinction between the type of person that says "I want to build a business, I think building product X sounds like a good way to do so" and the type that thinks "I want to build product X, I think building a business sounds like a good way to do so"

What’s interesting to me is that Amazon appears to be the former. Bezos wanted to start an Internet business, and he thought that books were a good way to do it. He was much more interested in the business model than anything to do with books specifically.

Apple and google seem to be more of the latter

Great insight.

For me, I just wanted to learn React/Node and picked the context of Electron.

Since I was a hardware/software integrator… I thought: what is the best common hardware with the worst software? Label printers!

Now, after 4 years of pure software I’m launching a new brand of 300 dpi label printers.

The value I’m offering Mac users is a blue ocean strategy: creating huge value at low cost whereas my windows version is more purple ocean (some blood in the water)… since I’m disrupting incumbents on the lower/middle sized end.

> people go into business with this as a strategy

Very very few truly do as you state at face value. Most people go in with a plan and rarely want to hard pivot.

But, starting a business is a test and the outcomes of the test shows whether it's working for you or not. Many times its fundamental business problems (homejoy) other times it's you (friendster vs fb).

There's no right/wrong way to decide what is the correct move because whatever example someone provides, there's plenty of counter examples.

But, firing as many bullets as possible helps reveal what potentially works and to double down on. Sometimes what is showing signs of life is an aspect of the business that's not directly related to your current core, but pivoting there means survival. That is the hard pivot (segment.io).

Failure isn't a strategy but it's a very likely outcome that you have to plan for. A startup fails to raise each successive round something like 67% of the time. [1] Of course you have to work on something you care about, but I think 'something you care about' can be a meaningful business that creates value to customers. Once you have traction you'll start to love it - or you won't.

You only fail when you stop trying.

[1] https://medium.com/journal-of-empirical-entrepreneurship/dis...

I assume the idea is that the initial impulse was in the right area, but the first attempt itself isn’t quite correct.

So you learned a bunch and therefore aren’t starting from scratch with the 2nd try.

I.e. you make some environmental tool and try to sell it to the government. You learn that the government is a byzantine mess. You then sell the tool as part of a service to the corporations causing the mess to prevent future lawsuits. You pivoted, but the tool itself still had value.

is that not just describing the process of finding customers?

What happens if you don't find a customer, even after some several iterations/searchings? How do you know the tool has value in that case, other than personal conviction?

More like “try to start a business doing something you think is important, but accept that you won’t build it right the first time”.

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