Evidence receipt / preference
Published · transcript-backedDalton 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.”
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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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