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Dalton Caldwell: preference

18 Apr 2024 Lenny's Podcast Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more | Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator, Managing Director)

“Again, this is one of those where I like to give very bespoke nuanced advice on a case by case basis to the folks in YC.”

— Dalton Caldwell

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Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Dalton Caldwell
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
preference
Recorded
18 Apr 2024
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

Transcript context

…A big question people are always wondering is, should I pivot? Is this the time to pivot? Should I keep trying this idea? What's your advice there of just, okay, now you should really be thinking about something else? Again, this is one of those where I like to give very bespoke nuanced advice on a case by case basis to the folks in YC. But again, just to give you a preview of how I would think about it, I would look at how many more ideas the founder has on how to make it grow. If it's not going well and you're out of ideas, that is usually a good time to pivot. But when you have half a dozen or a dozen really good growth ideas that you haven't tried yet, try them. Right? Hey, give it a shot. Again, in the Airbnb story, right? They tried all sorts of stuff including cereal and conventions. They had a bunch of zany ideas on growth and they didn't run out of them. And so I think when there's still gas in the tank on an idea that might be a reason to stay the course. And when literally the founder is like, "Yeah, I don't know, I guess maybe we should pay influencers or something." When that's the kind of ideas they're coming up with, that might be a better sign to pivot. That is incredibly helpful. Coming back to Zip real quick, they went through I think six different pivots before they landed on this idea that is now a billion-dollar business. Is there anything from that specific journey that you found really interesting? Because they went in so many different directions like accounting, marketplaces and-…

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