What we learned doing 3 pivots in 18 months

https://medium.com/inside-plato/birdly-as-you-knew-it-is-gone-fcc901457609

by qhoang09 • 9 years ago

4 3 9 years ago

qhoang092• 9 years ago

Hey all!

I'm Quang, co-founder and CEO of Plato (ex Birdly - YC W16).

I would love to have your thoughts on our journey these last 18 months. Feel free to comment, react, ask your question ... :)

madamelic• 9 years ago

Not to sound overly rude but how do you know you aren't completely wrong?

It seems like you all are burning money + people but still on the same idea but slightly different (Enterprise Slack bot).

How do you know the market is there? Slack for instance went from an MMORPG to a chat client. I am just genuinely curious why you all continue on this path?

qhoang092• 9 years ago

The idea is radically different. I define an idea: - What problem you're solving - Who are you solving this problem for?

Idea 1 - The problem of gathering data of a customer (SFDC, Intercom..) - Who: Product manager, Marketer, Sales... ?

Idea 2 - The Problem of management challenges - Who: Green Engineering Managers and CTOs

Being in Slack makes that the two ideas have the same UX / Distribution channel. But those two ideas are radically different.

"how do you know you aren't completely wrong?" => It's the whole point of the article, to derisk at the maximum this. If you can make sure that 1) You're solving a real problem => We are because we have some paying customers and interviewed more than 400 Engineering Managers 2) You're excited about this problem => We are because, as you said, we "burned" people being bad managers 3) It's innovative => We are because we haven't seen any similar product

Then if the 3 are checked, we have at least some chances of learning from our past experience

What we learned doing 3 pivots in 18 months

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