Knowing when to pivot your business
A startup, in its simplest form, is a series of hypotheses and assumptions that bring like minded individuals together with the mission of getting validated and creating value. It takes months, sometimes years to figure out all the answers to your questions, and to find your first paying customers. And when it comes down to it, most startups don’t even reach that stage.
However, with just the right combination of vision and talent in a startup, pivoting is the best way of saving a startup from going downhill, when you fail to prove your initial hypotheses.
Pivot: “structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth” —The Lean Startup, Eric Ries.
When we first started Tables App (now TablesWork), we started designing an app based around our original hypothesis, which was: restaurants would pay for a product that helps them take orders fasters and more effeciently from customers. We spent over 5 months to develop an app before showing it to more than 40 local restaurants in Kitchener and Waterloo. What we learned, in the period of 2 weeks talking with several restaurant owners, was that it’s either too early for such app to revolutinize the restaurant industry or that they genuinely weren’t interested.
We took some time to get ourselves back on our feet, re-evaluated what we heard and all of a sudden, we realized that based on talking to our customers, we have a new customer segment in mind. And thus, TablesWork was born with the mission to cater healthy meals to local offices. Before we knew it, we made a pivot into a new market while keeping our value propositions the same, which is to make food ordering more convinient.
In conclusion (tl;dr), learn as much as you can while validating your startup, so that you could strategically plan your next move. Either your customers have some other problem you could solve, or your current solution works best for them. In both cases, keep iterating and improving your product to keep your customers happy.
Learn as much as you can while validating your startup, so that you could strategically plan your next move — Tweet This
Thanks for reading,
Nima
