From Charlie Guo on How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator:
Your startup idea might not hold weight. The business model might be untested, the implementation may not be possible with current technology. One solution is to take notice of the opportunities around you, and try a new direction. Pivot. From the article:
On top of everything else, our mentors had just impressed upon us that our idea was stupid. So we pivoted.
Our company was in awful shape. We had less than five weeks to Demo Day, when we were expected to present our ideas before a massive gathering of investors—most likely the biggest such audience we’d ever have. So we pivoted. Again.
The counterargument, is that one has already accumulated hard-earned expertise in the original business domain.
Looking back, we should have tried harder to address the partners’ concerns. We should have found a way to use the code we’d written and the domain expertise we’d gained. Instead, we threw out all of our data, all of our work, and started over.
I don’t know if this is true for other people, but as a flailing founder I desperately wanted to believe in the startup myth—that success was just over the next ridge, that if we waited a bit longer, or had a slightly better idea, we would suddenly be riding a rocket ship.
So should one pivot, or double down? There may never be a clear answer. There will always be opportunities. And for new businesses, there will always be questions about the model and execution. The lesson in the end is to find a problem and have faith in that the problem is worth solving:
And I’ve learned something very important about myself: I don’t want to start another company until I find a problem that I care about. A problem that I eat, sleep and breathe. A problem worth solving.