Uri Levine: recommendation

Transcript context

…Just never give up. To double down on this pivot point real quick. So the things you should look at to help you decide if a pivot is a good idea, you shared, you have some tech that might be helpful in this new direction, you have a team that's really well suited to this new idea or you have some knowledge. Is there anything else, just like what's that list of things you should look at to see, to come up with ideas/decide this is a good idea for us to pursue? So going back to basic, but now you are already running, so you probably have already validated the problem or the value proposition. About pivoting, so when you start you think that, okay, I have this brilliant idea. And what I really encourage people is first of all, go and validate the problem, speak with people, understand their perception of the problem. And only then start to think about the solution. Now, this is still not the case in most startups. And this is fall in love with the problem, not the solution. And for a few reasons, and maybe number one reason is, look, entrepreneurship journey is about creating value. Simplest way to create value, seel a product, that's it, simplest way. And I like simple. But then in addition, when you focus on the problem, then the problem is going to serve as the north star of your journey. And when you have a north star, you're going to make less deviation from the course and increase the likelihood of being successful. But by and large, your story is going to be way more compelling. If we will be here in 2007, and I will tell you that I'm going to build an AI crowdsourced based navigation system, you're going to say, "Oh yeah, very interesting," But you don't care. If I will tell you I'm going to help you to avoid traffic jams, then you do care. When your customer care, they want you to be successful. And when they want you to be successful, they are going to help you to become successful. And so this is going back into pivoting the same way, first of all, validate what's your value proposition, what's the problem you're going to solve. Now, in most cases you already validated that because you in the market for some years and you had dialogues with customers and you already realized that. And maybe you already told yourself, you know what? In my next startup this is what I'm going to do. And so it's possible that you already validated. And if you haven't, then this is exactly the time to revalidate the value proposition. So this is the first thing that you need to do. And then the second thing that you want to do is ask yourself, do I really have a significant advantage here? Do I really have the team, the technology, the know-how to make a leap from here and really lead the market? And then the other part of it is, okay, do I have the energy and the passion to go and do it all over again? Because this is going back to square one, trying to figure out product market fit and then figuring out business model and then figuring out growth and so forth. So the entire journey from scratch. And if you answer yes to all of those, so you have the very significant value proposition and you think that you have something that is going to accelerate you dramatically because of the know-how, the technology, the team, then the next thing that you're going to do is validate it with the team. In your underlining assumptions the team is going to continue. Maybe, maybe not. se of the know-how, the technology, the team, then the next thing that you're going to do is validate it with the team. In your underlining assumptions the team is going to continue. Maybe, maybe not. This is exactly the time that you would like to validate that. And the way that you're going to validate that is you basically say to them, "Guess what? We are fucked. Our underlining assumptions are no longer valid. And this is our new opportunity and we can go this path or we can die." And let's see what people, if they believe in the new path, then this is a good idea. In many cases, by the way, it's possible that the new path will come from them. They're the one that are closer to the customers, they're the one that are closer to the technology. They're the one that are probably know better than you if this new path is actually valid or not. And if this is the case, then you go and do it. The last one that you want to ... Look, even if you don't have the money for it, let's say that you don't have plenty of cash in the bank, go back to the investors and go back to raise capital because now you actually have a very significant advantage. You already have a technology, you already have a team, you already have the know-how, you are already second time entrepreneur because pivot is like restarting from scratch or you are already multiple times entrepreneur, so you are way more attractive today than when you were a few years back. And so go back to existing investors and new investors and raise more capital for this new journey.…

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