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I think the hardest part about this (the article is inherently tainted a bit by survivorship bias of course) is to know when exactly it is time to move on from

I think the hardest part about this (the article is inherently tainted a bit by survivorship bias of course) is to know when exactly it is time to move on from an idea, and when to try a bit harder with it. A fantastic idea posted on the wrong forum and/or at the wrong time feels EXACTLY like you've missed PMF (especially for someone doing this for the first time). I believe there is a lot of history of this right here in the HN archives. Just because nobody picks up on it, doesn't automatically disqualify it. Unless, of course, you're 400k of Google ads deep without much of a sign-up, then you might consider moving on. I'd argue that it's next to impossible to know if an idea has failed reaching PMF, when you haven't solved the "getting it in front of the right people" part yet.

enos_feedler 4y ago
It isn't always hard to know when to move on. I think a lot of it depends on how big the exploration space is around the product you are trying to build. Building a "I'm confused" feedback button for students attending college lectures doesn't provide much roadway for exploration. You can find out pretty fast whether the product has legs. When the product is something like "a low code developer platform", the space of building is so rich it would be worth building for long stretches of time to learn the right thing to make. The difficult part is in nailing the right product. I would keep working on something like this until someone else has won the market. I am not judging ideas by saying one of the above is better than the other. It's quite possible discovering the lecture solution gets you to a bigger business faster and can create more impact and a bigger company. It just seems like it's easy to weigh the design space of the product, the current state of the market to figure out how long you should work on it.
dehrmann 4y ago
I'll pick on Wordle or Among Us. There was something about pandemic times that made those work, but they could have been done any time in the past 10+ years and gotten less attention. Among Us even predates the pandemic. It was just before its time, but not by too much.
- mittermayr 4y ago
  Great example actually. Among Us really picked up once everyone was sat at home and I would even argue many people installed a multi-player game for the first time in their lives with this.

enos_feedler 4y ago

It isn't always hard to know when to move on. I think a lot of it depends on how big the exploration space is around the product you are trying to build. Building a "I'm confused" feedback button for students attending college lectures doesn't provide much roadway for exploration. You can find out pretty fast whether the product has legs. When the product is something like "a low code developer platform", the space of building is so rich it would be worth building for long stretches of time to learn the right thing to make. The difficult part is in nailing the right product. I would keep working on something like this until someone else has won the market. I am not judging ideas by saying one of the above is better than the other. It's quite possible discovering the lecture solution gets you to a bigger business faster and can create more impact and a bigger company. It just seems like it's easy to weigh the design space of the product, the current state of the market to figure out how long you should work on it.

dehrmann 4y ago

I'll pick on Wordle or Among Us. There was something about pandemic times that made those work, but they could have been done any time in the past 10+ years and gotten less attention. Among Us even predates the pandemic. It was just before its time, but not by too much.

mittermayr 4y ago
Great example actually. Among Us really picked up once everyone was sat at home and I would even argue many people installed a multi-player game for the first time in their lives with this.