Swinging or persevere: Dealing with the great dilemma in a startup

In the life of an entrepreneur is 100% sure that sooner or later arises a dilemma of these characteristics: I change (swing) my business model to try to get some more encouraging, or just’m on the right track results and persevere in the same direction the objectives will be achieved as ripe fruit?

When we put a business idea in the market, our calculations are based on “acts of faith” uncorroborated or tested. It is for this reason that the vast majority of times we get unexpected results at first. And there dancing ideas, thoughts and doubts about what was going to be and time is not start. Here we would like to have all a magic ball to predict the future and avoid making a wrong decision that leads away substantially from the minimum viable results for the survival of the startup.

Until we invent a machine of the future, we try to take some measures to help make a delicate decision like this:

• If you can be, do not make this decision a personal and non – transferable question: I check with your computer, ask for opinions and address the issue from all angles
• If you have to swing, you have to set clear goals in this other direction, not to try an opposite model get better results
• It should be based on figures sometimes feelings you may have are very treacherous
• If possible, do some test in parallel to serve you to at least have some data in a hypothetical case of pivoting?

On many occasions it is the proper entrepreneur who as part of their daily struggle clings to the initial idea because it gives the feeling that swing is to take a defeat and start again, that’s not true, it is simply in the way of power 100% validate your business model and establish a more solid future ahead guidelines. Another element to comment on is that sometimes the ego does not allow us to rectify quickly because we have to assume mistakes at some points and not everyone is used to that, you have to know to be in the sweet moments (this all know) and also in the most complex stages that require changes (and sometimes simply loaded persevere and patience), debates and restructuring of the project.

Another very important aspect to control is anxiety in times of low results, which also cannot do is make 1000 changes at once and haphazardly because it invades the sense of urgency. That will only serve to lose neither perspective of the strategy nor well which can measure all the changes turns out to be the most effective.

Especially in startups, these issues are often recurring, so as normal is that regular meetings are scheduled persevere-swinging serve as a means of channeling new proposals that even collide with the current business model. Raise new options is healthy and sometimes opportunities are lost simply because they fit the “do” initial.

Recently, to help test our hypotheses, from lean startup machine has created the board validation tool. This allows us to control our pivots and manage the lifecycle of it.