When is it time to quit the current idea and try something new?

Growing as a product manager Product
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I have been working on an idea on the side and I am not sure whether I should quit or keep at it.

It has been more than 6 months and I have made some progress but nothing extraordinary.

Has anyone started a company and gone through the same issue?

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The main question to ask is which of the two is it?

A. High confidence in the importance of the problem you’re solving, and low confidence in the correctness of the solution

Or

B. Low confidence in the importance of the problem you’re solving, and high confidence in the correctness of the solution

A. Low problem, high solution → Probably best to sunset the product or revisit the problem space

B. High problem, low solution → Does the team/leadership have the appetite to revisit the solution space and to place a new bet in the near/mid-term future?

I’ve experienced B. Was not a product, but a mega feature within the product.

There was high confidence in the importance of the problem, but the solution was overly complex to use and to maintain for the user. Was used by a few early adopters where the problem was more pronounced, but too much friction in the solution to reach the early majority.

We redesigned the feature. Then built it from scratch. Then sunset it after over 5 years from v1. Had a funeral presentation and everything :slight_smile:

Hard to kill the B type :slightly_smiling_face:

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I want build on this, and what I assume @AhmadBashir is pointing to, is that you really need to identify a critical problem worth solving. If you’re in bucket A, e.g. low confidence in problem, high confidence in the solution, you can always take a look at pivoting your customer base. Look at another user within the same industry, or somebody up/down stream from the problem you’re trying to solve. In other words, perhaps you’re solving the right problem but for the wrong people. You can also look at other industries or markets. Justin.tv → Twitch is a classic example of this. There are a ton of other types of pivots that you can take before you give up on an idea. A quick list is:

  • Zoom-in / zoom-out pivot
  • Customer segment pivot
  • Customer need pivot
  • Channel pivot
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