How do I know when to keep going, pivot or quit?

Jumping from one place to the other doesn't help. I think you should spend time to figure out which space you want to focus on for the next three years. Go all in on that.

You have to pivot with a certain startup. But nowadays you can launch a couple of startups yearly if you want. You just gotta focus and good ideas gonna come.

You're gonna face a lot of struggles and doubts over the next years. It's super important to have passion for the topic to stay consistent, not to put it on the shelf after the first month.

From the outside, I'd probably just shut these businesses down. It seems like a waste of time because it's not fulfilling for you.

I think the act of you being able to just set them up, think of the processes, get the website up, all these things, I think that was good. I don't think that was wasted time. It taught you what you want and what you don't want.

My first real advice is to choose your number one priority. If you want to change the world, you either do it or have somebody else do it. If you just need to get whatever you can and go do something else, that's another avenue.

I know it has a price. Changing the world may come at the expense of your own personal finance. The exit may come at the expense of changing the world.

I don't want you to confuse frustration with your own self worth. You could be throwing yourself at a brick wall that is very hard to break. Give yourself a little bit of grace.

Looking back, there were many things I wanted to do. But really I was trying to run away from something, or I had something to prove to somebody. Make sure you understand why that direction is really important to you, then move towards it with conviction.

Everything you're going to be doing is about learning. If it works, great, you learn something. If it doesn't work, great, you learn something.

Engineers like us start leaning on what is safe and familiar and writing a whole bunch of code. We don't know that people want it until we actually talk to them. Try to create as many conversations as you can.

I think part of it depends upon your appetite, your threshold, your budgets and all that.

Timewise, how much are you willing to invest in it? Money wise, how much are you willing to invest in it? What does success look like in the first 90 days? And in the first six months?

Reevaluate, but see how you're tracking along.

Let's take an example: you start uploading your content on one channel. Is there stuff happening? You're looking for little signals that things are going in the right direction.

Say over the next 4 weeks you upload two pieces every week. That's eight in total. If in two months from now there's nothing, there's crickets, then you know, OK, this is maybe not the way to go. And then you try a few other things and try them fast.

If really nothing works out no matter what you try, either you have not found the right angle or it's really time to just stop it.

You have to have a structured plan for everything you're going to do. Say: here's the email I'm going to send the first day, here's the follow-up, here's what's going to happen in 30 days.

Have a success metric there: two bites, maybe from 10 emails or 50 emails. Did I get those two clients in those 30 days?

If I don't get a bite, I'm going to try another thing for the next month. And if for three months you cannot get any bites and you've changed all of these things up and you've been structured, that should be an indication it's not going anywhere.

A lot of startups that raise money also fail. The main metric is: do clients love you, and are they sticking through with you?

Just because a competitor raised doesn't mean you should quit this idea. The moment you start getting clients, let's say 5 or 10, you may realize you've discovered a whole new niche that's quite different from theirs.

If there's a lot of white space, I don't think you should be too worried about competitors raising money and doing the exact same thing. I don't think we'll ever find an idea that will be just you. And if you do, that might be a red flag.

You're very early in your idea. You absolutely need a co-founder.

Spend time finding a co-founder rather than only building the product. Look for someone you trust, can communicate with, who has money to invest. When you meet that co-founder, you'll know. They will challenge you in a constructive way.

If you find a co-founder, it's meant to be. If you don't, maybe it's a sign to wait. I would look for a co-founder as your next step.

Don't get stuck to an idea unless you have hungry people willing to pay for it. It's easy today with AI to build a product. You can do it in hours. It's very hard to find demand.

Your job is not to finish your platform. Your job is to understand if there are people who have this pain. Have a minimal viable community of people willing to pay for it in advance.

Go talk to people and gather feedback. Ask about their pain, not the product. If you have another idea, go pre-validate the idea.