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10 Comments

Love what you build but be able to kill it quickly.

I found this interesting.

  1. 4

    While I generally agree that you would be able to let your product go if it is not working, but how long does it take to be sure it won’t, is a none trivial question that depends on your product, market, and your sales ability and many other factors. The virtue of being patient and persistent and not giving up on the first roadblock can be your competitive advantage in comparison to others, especially in the B2B. I have experience in fin-tech and biotech, where it took more than five years to validate the ideas and cancel one of them and continue the other.

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      Totally agree! In fact another way to look at it is "don't kill your idea until you actually have negative validation (from multiple segments)". Working on a project for a year, coming up against a technical challenge, and killing it is probably killing the project too soon (or without enough feedback).

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        Also, having a marketing site and a Facebook page online doesn't cut it.
        You need to actively seek out your target audience online.

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          See my comment below...

          Yes, constructively ENGAGING with users is crucial. That, IMO, means a 2-way dialogue where they can give you positive or negative feedback and you can build and grow on.

  2. 2

    Ouch. Hits me right. I feel so frustrated a few days ago when finding out that my idea may not get the traction as I expected.

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      Really sorry to hear. Is that the Q&A platform that's not going to get traction? In both Lean B2B and Lean Startup the talk about zoom in pivot, zoom out pivot, market pivot, or complete vision pivot (the hardest). Is there a smaller pivot you can make to gain traction rather than abandon entirely?

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        Yea. I'm not thinking about abandoning it yet. Just speaking about the mindset discussed by these books you are talking about. Great mindset but not that easy to achieve.

  3. 1

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  4. 1

    Negative validation is almost impossible early on.

    You don't understand the problem fully, you don't know your customers well, you haven't learned anywhere near optimal messaging, and your solution is barely working.

    How could you possibly know that the part that causes "negative" validation is your actual idea or long term vision for the solution, instead of some of those above reasons?

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    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 2

      Totally agree, posting this and the comments made me think of, and post about Idea Validation. If you never, constructively, engage with your potential users you'll never know if they want it.

      I too have abandoned perfectly good ideas with little or no feedback from potential users.

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        This comment was deleted a year ago.

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