Evaluating Startup Ideas and When to Pivot: Learn From Our Mistakes
Lots of writing out there suggests that the best way to start almost every startup is by first working on the problem as a side project. But how do you know if your product idea is best to be kept as a side project or should be pursued as something greater? If your idea doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction, when should you call it quits and move on to something else?
Warning: don’t simply hope early on that your idea for a side project will turn into a fully-fledged startup and don’t simply move on to your next idea when progress seems weak.
In spring 2020, Thomas, Modest and I (Alex) applied to Y Combinator’s summer batch. We received an invitation to interview. We had applied with an idea that was aiming to solve a problem that my 15-year old brother had: trying to assess the career options ahead of him and not knowing where to start. Our initial solution was dubbed ‘Wayfinder’, which we stated was going to 'gamify career discovery for high schoolers'; basically a fun-to-use learning resource to allow high school students to conveniently explore different career paths.
Three weeks after submitting the application, and five product iterations later, we started to feel our hearts weren’t in the problem we were trying to solve. We (and more importantly, my brother) weren’t excited by any of the initial products we had developed.
