Yeah, that’s tricky. My hope is that once you’re decently good at execution, you can recognize good execution, such that you can distinguish between the two.
What seems harder yet is “idea is flop and should be adjusted” vs “idea is flop and I should switch to a different idea” (a distinction which, by the way, lives on a spectrum)
The Lean Startup describes this as the “Pivot or Persevere” question.
Where persevere is roughly: iterate more on the current idea.
And Pivot is roughly: iterate/change to a different idea.
There are movements that say people should quit sooner (see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xdyioqs5Ds ), and stories of startup founders who stubbornly stuck to their vision, rejection after rejection (whilst iterating).
Oh, also, getting advice from others is probably helpful on the execution front. If you’re underexecuting, people can probably recognize that, I expect. Whereas good advise on the product-market-fit side, i.e. “should I iterate on this idea or pivot to another one) is very hard to give/get.
How does one distinguish “idea is a flop and should be killed” from “idea is good, under-executed and more effort would make it work”?
Yeah, that’s tricky. My hope is that once you’re decently good at execution, you can recognize good execution, such that you can distinguish between the two.
What seems harder yet is “idea is flop and should be adjusted” vs “idea is flop and I should switch to a different idea” (a distinction which, by the way, lives on a spectrum)
The Lean Startup describes this as the “Pivot or Persevere” question.
Where persevere is roughly: iterate more on the current idea.
And Pivot is roughly: iterate/change to a different idea.
There are movements that say people should quit sooner (see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xdyioqs5Ds ), and stories of startup founders who stubbornly stuck to their vision, rejection after rejection (whilst iterating).
Oh, also, getting advice from others is probably helpful on the execution front. If you’re underexecuting, people can probably recognize that, I expect. Whereas good advise on the product-market-fit side, i.e. “should I iterate on this idea or pivot to another one) is very hard to give/get.