THE NECESSITY OF DISTANCE
Or Analysis of the epiphany of a pivot
When I started writing this, I had just ended a meeting with one of my executive managers at the incubator. We talked about my conclusions from the first sample of interviews I had while testing the market for my future company. We discussed these findings and I was expressing my doubts on the feasibility of the project as I had imagined it originally.
As I said in a previous article, the good thing about incubation and the LEAN startup approach, is that it makes you challenge your hypothesis with the very clients or partners that you plan on making with your business. And you do that early on in order to determine quickly enough whether you’re actually on the way to solving problems or you’re just trying to invent another genius yet unuseful new solution.
So I came to him not knowing if I would continue exploring the way I had been doing things for the past few months. And I wanted concrete contacts of people who I could call in order to test my new targets. I am actually happy and lucky I do have another possible strategy. Sometimes your first idea brings you to a dead end and not everybody can find that one aspect about their project that can be applied elsewhere.
I did not get the contacts. Why? Because he represents the incubator and the network, along with the identity of the entrepreneurs and their projects, is the institution’s most valuable asset? Probably. But I also understood and now know that these contacts will only be useful to me when I actually and deeply rethink the strategy and the orientation of the project. He told me “You got to distance yourself from the project and from your personal ambitions”
“You got to distance yourself from the project and from your personal ambitions”
The fact that an entrepreneur has a limited amount of time or money available to build and start their company has absolutely nothing to do with their analysis of the opportunity that they’re attacking and the value that they’re actually bringing to the market. One should not have anything to do with the other.
Step away from what YOU think the problem and the solution should be. Step away from YOUR personal constraints and timeline. They likely won’t be respected. We can almost all bet on it. On the contrary, make the most thorough and empathetic analysis of your target market. Put yourself in their shoes, take the necessary time to not only have a correct sample size of interviewees and have a precise idea of how they do now without you, and how they would do way better in the future with your help.
Analyze.Question.Assess. Pivot. And do so until your market-value proposition is so strong that the product specifications could almost write themselves from the list of absolutely necessary features your clients need.
This is a very quick post about the epiphany one entrepreneur can have when facing the dilemna of staying put in a direction they initially took but they start doubting their hypothesis, or changing strategies and redefining their company. I call it the epiphany of the pivot.
Feel free to comment if you want to add or discuss anything on this topic. Clap if you appreciated the reading.
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