Every founder has a hypothesis based on which he develops a product which he believes customers will pay for. However, sometimes the market doesn’t behave the way you want (or expect) it to. Some founders get very upset and start believing that the world is conspiring to cause them to fail.
They gripe about how short-sighted customers are, and how they need more time to prove that their idea is viable. Many believe that if only investors would give them more money, they would become wildly successful. They can’t understand why no one sees their grand vision, and why it’s so hard for them to raise funds or find paying customers.
When things aren’t going your way, please stop asking yourself why the market isn’t doing what you want it to. Instead, ask yourself why it is doing what it is. That should be an easier question to answer, and will probably be a good first step in figuring out how to change your tactics.
Having to pivot is not a sign of failure. It shows that you are wiser about market conditions than when you first started and are resilient enough to be flexible.
As Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Being pigheaded is not a strength, and you don’t need to be wed to your original beliefs when you realise that your hypothesis was incorrect.
Keep in mind that often the problem is not where you think it is – if it were, you would probably have found it by now!
One counterintuitive way to go about deciding where to look is asking where the problem cannot be. As Sherlock Holmes said, “Eliminate all other factors and the one which remains must be the truth.”
It’s also very helpful to explain the problem to somebody else. We all develop blind spots. Often attempting to explain the problem to someone will lead you to see things you have missed.
For example, try to explain why the problem cannot be in certain places. This can be a very productive exercise, as it will cause you to challenge your own beliefs!
Writing things down helps a lot. Describe what has happened so far as if you were a journalist . This will help you approach the problem from a different perspective because it allows you to step outside yourself. This kind of meta-thinking helps you to keep your ego out of the picture.
Sleeping over the problem can help you tackle it with a fresh viewpoint. After all, as Scarlett O’Hara said in Gone With the Wind, “Tomorrow is a new day!”
This is why it is a good idea to become a bootstrapped entrepreneur when you are young. You have less money to lose, which is why your mistakes will be less expensive, and more memorable. This hard-earned experience will help prevent you from making more costly errors later on.
[This post by Dr. Aniruddha Malpani first appeared on LinkedIn and has been reproduced with permission.]
