Steve Blank: Vision versus Hallucination - Founders and Pivots

<i>In searching for product/market fit (the right match between value proposition and customer segment) the product should be the last part you think of changing – not the first</i><p>That is <i>shocking</i>. I'm glad Steve said it clearly in those words, because I've certainly been believing the exact opposite.<p>And with that, I'm now more confused than ever by the whole customer development and lean startup way of doing things.

With this discussion in mind, a concrete case study is "When should RIM have pivoted?" When should they have invested most of their R&#38;D into a developer friendly ecosystem and committed to a well defined strategy like Samsung (a hardware company), Google (ad platform company) or Apple (hardware and content platform) company? I believe RIM is most similar to Apple, but would die a slow death from hardware development costs without the volume support, so should have pivoted and merged with NOKIA while both were strong to leverage RIM's enterprise software expertise with NOKIA's hardware development/manufacturing scale. The pivot occurs when you do the numbers and realize that to master both hardware and software is a rare feat of skill not worth embarking on unless you believe you can beat Apple at its own game.

Great post. Thank you. I think it also speaks to the importance of understanding the market for what you're building before you start. Just because a piece of software solves a problem doesn't mean there is a market for it. Some solutions don't translate into $'s.

<i>Find a Brainstorm Buddy</i> <i>Finally, I suggested that he find someone he respects on his advisory board, who he was comfortable brainstorming with and would tell him when he has a bad idea.</i><p>That's good stuff. I think I've been guilty of falling in love with my own ideas at times. :-( I need to start doing more of this and leaning on our advisors more.

I had a startup partner who was like this. It was exhausting. The reason a-pivot-a-week is not the same as a lean startup is because with such rapid pivots there is no way your changes are based on <i>data</i>. It's not pivoting; it's just churning.<p>Steve comes close to saying this, but I think it'd help to take all these ideas and gush about them to someone outside the company. (He suggests an advisor; I'd say a spouse or a friend.) Once you get it out of the system and think about it for a few days, then talk about it with your co-founders/employees.

You know, pivoting is smart when you're doing the wrong thing, and it's dumb when you're already on the right path, but the path you're on is long and hard.<p>For example, if you're building yet another iOS Twitter client or instagram clone, pivoting to something else might make sense now that the big opportunities in that space are gone, but if you're building a new search engine like Duck Duck Go, a pivot a year or two ago into something else would have been a bad decision. The tricky part seems to be knowing when you are pushing towards a big opportunity that is hard to break into or when you are pushing towards a gigantic waste of time.<p>Pivoting when you're going nowhere is smart, pivoting when something gets hard could be a huge mistake. This reminds me a bit of Seth Godin's ideas about "the dip".

Halluc-in-ation.<p>#corrections