The Pivot is Painful

About two months ago, I had the benefit (or curse!) of seeing the detailed financials of a competitor to my start-up. The competitor had been at it for 5+ years, with an established customer base. EDIT: This information was shared in good faith, in the spirit of collaboration from all parties. I saw the customer revenues, the personnel and software costs, the tax bill - effectively the P&L of a little company in the same exact target market as mine.

I spent about two days poring over the data, making sure I really understood what I was looking at, and considering creative ways to fiddle with X, Y, or Z to change the outcome. I hosted a wrestling match in my head, as my inner Realist wrestled Delusional Founder, and I experimented with different scenarios - both rosy and stark reality.

And finally, months into my start-up journey, I internalized the caveat that more senior mentors had warned me about my product. The TAM just isn't that big. Maybe there's a way to amend the pricing model or grow the market, but I saw that I am barely going to make a living off of this idea, even if I do ALL of the jobs. I'd be the developer, the customer support, the sales outreach, and I'd make less than half what I did in my last corporate job.

Shit.

The obvious next step

The answer to this problem, the "what next," is to pivot. Welcome to Silicon Valley 101. Continuously and relentlessly know your customer, know the pain points, until you find a new business model. Obviously! I know that's the next step.

What I didn't anticipate is how depressing this moment would be.

I love building products. I know there's a real gap in this market, and customers need a better solution. But I will also need a pay check before too long. I don't want to fully abandon the idea, because I could really pursue this as a side-gig in a future state of the world. However, the idea as it stands can't be my full-time focus.

And now, looking back, I see that I've been grieving the idea, and I've been in a weird funk for 6-8 weeks. That's a long time in start-up land!

Sure, I was juggling a lot during this time - co-camp lead at Burning Man, hosted my best friend and her two kids for a week for their summer vacation, started my kid in a soccer league, and did a ton of other projects around the house. But that funk was real, and it was about mourning this thing I'd been building.

I've also been applying and interviewing for regular jobs. One of my mentors once told me that the application process and start-up process will pull at heart-strings in opposite directions. Let me tell you that this is fully true.

What's next

I have a new idea. (Actually I have like 10 ideas.) I'm going to deliberate and see where this pivot takes me.

The biggest thing I'm taking from this experience is that the emotional side of pivoting hits different than I expected. All the startup advice tells you what to do with the business, but nobody really talks about the grief part. Maybe that's something other founders need to hear too.

Wish me luck.