What signal indicates that a founder should pivot away from an idea?

Jeff Seibert · Nov 22, 2023

The right time to pivot is when the window is closing on your path to success in the current business — it's a matter of founder instinct, not data

Knowing when you have enough data is more art than science; the founder has to feel whether a path to success still exists

Scope: more art than science; requires founder feel and instinct

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Dan Siroker · May 15, 2024

Founders rarely literally run out of experiments; the real pivot signal is when you stop believing the next thing you try could plausibly make a difference

You naturally run your most promising hypotheses first, so if the last five haven't worked the sixth is unlikely to be the key

Scope: 'sometimes' the next experiment does work

8:36 20VC: Fundraising Wisdom that is Total BS; Dilution, Meeting Associates, Taking the Highest Price, Always Be Raising | Why Second Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College with Dan Siroker, CEO @ Limitless

Harry Stebbings · Jun 26, 2023

The test for whether to pivot is whether you still have experiments you're excited to try; if the answer is no, it's time to pivot

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Harry Stebbings · May 15, 2024

The test for whether to pivot is whether you still have experiments you're excited to run — when you run out of them, it's time to change

8:16 20VC: Fundraising Wisdom that is Total BS; Dilution, Meeting Associates, Taking the Highest Price, Always Be Raising | Why Second Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College with Dan Siroker, CEO @ Limitless

Dan Siroker · May 15, 2024

If you've worked on an idea for around six months and see no glimmers of hope, it's time to pivot — the idea doesn't have to be working, but there must be early glimmers

Even famously slow successes like Airbnb showed very early glimmers that the idea was powerful

6:55 No glimmers of hope after roughly six months signals a pivot

Guy Podjarny · May 24, 2023

Whether to persist or quit should be decided by first-principles diagnosis: you need a theory of change explaining what fundamentally causes the current situation and what will materially change it

If the only answers are 'if only I built this feature' or 'if only I talked to that person', you are missing something; churning in different directions is the signal of a real problem

24:59 Diagnose with a theory of change not symptom fixes to decide persist or pivot

Akin Babayigit · Jun 26, 2023

The advice to focus on a single thing early on is dangerous as stated because it never addresses what happens if the one thing you chose is the wrong thing

Founders hear the message delivered with total certainty from prominent VCs and podcasts and commit three years to one game type; success actually comes down to judgment about whether you're focusing on the right thing, which requires breathing room to pivot

26:23 Focus advice is incomplete without addressing risk of focusing on the wrong thing

Akin Babayigit · Jun 26, 2023 · hedged

Knowing when to persist versus when to pivot is probably the single biggest determinant of startup success, and there is no formula for it

A startup building something that doesn't exist yet may just be bumping its head against a wall; read as dogma, 'focus' becomes 'keep bumping your head against the wall', so the real strength is knowing how to pivot

28:41 Knowing when to persist vs pivot not formula is the biggest determinant of success

Jake Gibson · Jul 14, 2023

Great founders fail mainly by failing to find product-market fit and by getting stuck behind their original idea instead of pivoting early enough — and this is where VCs add real value by forcing a plan and a pivot decision

He is doing exactly this with a portfolio company: a defined plan with a two-month test window, and a commitment to pivot if the current thing, while showing some signs of working, can't become a huge business

32:16 Great founders mainly fail from lack of pmf and slowness to pivot so vcs add value by forcing a pivot decision