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by andrewstuart 439 days ago
Have a frank and open discussion about things. That may clear the air and right the relationship.

As for pivoting ….. Steve Blank says, "A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."

So yes you need to be trying to find what works. Maybe try to decide together what you work on and for how long. But you do need to be actively searching.
1 comments
tptacek 439 days ago
Pivoting before you raise is great. Pivoting after you raise is less great; if you're effectively starting from scratch (for a definition of "scratch" that includes "everything you could do if you just walked away and started a new company with a clean cap table"), it's costing you to be doing that with investors already signed on.
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andrewstuart 439 days ago
Nevertheless, without a repeatable business model, your task is still to search till you find one.

You are correct though, the money should come after it’s found.

He did say he had early traction I wonder what happened to that.

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stuck12345 436 days ago
we pivoted away from it for fairly dumb reasons ngl. my cofounder didn't segment ICP whatsoever and then got mixed signals from the market and eventually decided there wasn't a need. in hindsight, there was demand we just botched it. this is my first year doing startups and it's my fault not learning enough startup basics when we got started.
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stuck12345 436 days ago
could you please elaborate why it's costing me to be doing this investors already signed on?
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tptacek 436 days ago
Because you're more or less starting over. The technical work you do would carry over, to a large extent, at a new company with a clean cap table. All the "real" work is customer discovery and early GTM. Your investors signed on for an earlier company, that company didn't pan out, they're adults, they get that, they don't get a claim on your next company.

It's not like this is an iron rule, but it's something you should be thinking about. If the only things in common between your new direction and your old one is your cofounder and some of your tech stack, you should have a good reason to keep the investors on, right?

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