HACKER Q&A
📣 charles830918

How to Know if We Should Pivot? And What Should We Pivot?


Hi there,

We're building a product called Curator Bio, a bio site for creators to share their curations and get supported directly by their audience.

Why do we want to build this product: https://www.curator.bio/charles/62e2b183/26c2ee8f11

We've built this product for almost 3 months and it has some users and tractions for now, but we expect it still has a long time to go to start making profits because the business model we think is like "Substack", we only receive the subscription fee as you grow and the percentage once you start earning.

However, with limited resources, we found that we might not be able to wait for the day to make a profit. And here is the topic, how to know if we should pivot? and what should we pivot?

Our team all believe the concept of this product is right, but it takes too long to make a profit. So should we keep working on this product but change our business model to a freemium subscription? But maybe this model won't work on this product.

Or should we change to another idea based on the insight we had before, although it's a smaller idea, we think it's more specific and can profit faster.

  👤 Move37 Accepted Answer ✓
I would advise to look at your growth numbers and do user interviews. If you grow at least 20 % month over month - do not pivot. Because having a solid growth that is not linear connected to ad spend is something you should keep and rather improve than pivot. If you do not grow anywhere near that speed, a pivot might make sense. But there are so many factors that play into this.
👤 pacerier
Way TLI.

- How big's the team? Who's putting in money?

- What's the burn rate? Default alive? (Using words like "we believe" sure does make it appear so, at least as far as a lifespan which is definitely doable.)

- Why are the people who are supposed to be paying paying?

- Who are you building the app for? For science/arts or for users?

- Who are you building the app for? Individuals? Teens? Adults? Retirees? The 1%? The 99%? Most adults don't have a fanbase and thus will not have free waking hours to CurateBio in the hopes that people will fund them to do just that. (Untldr: Growth is exponential thus population quickly expands to fill land prices which expand to fill simple lifestyles and waking hours. Even in a land with price caps or ownership banned, pop eventually expands to fill construction prices which again expand to fill simple lifestyles and waking hours. (Construction stops where adding another storey due to gravity, requires more men than there is literally available.) Until ownership is banned not just for land but also for Tech can there be such things as free waking hours for the people.) Folks don't do self-curation on facebook/Flickr/Linktree/Authory expecting to be paid just by doing that.

- re "another idea", Elaborate?

- re "profit faster", What's the purpose of the funds?