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Dalton + MichaelDalton + Michael

Should You Pivot Your Startup?

Should you pivot your company? Or do you just have a case of the "pivots"? It's easier than ever to pivot but that might not be the right decision. Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss an all-important topic: the pivot. Discussion includes: diagnosing the reason for the pivot, having good ideas, trying your core hypothesis, embrace hard work, why dentist startups becomes a popular pivot choice, are you using your own product, how the AI changes how you can pivot, avoiding "pivot hell" at all costs, force yourself to work on an idea for at least three months, default to your experience, avoiding "cope", making the big move when you have no information, when to declare emotional bankruptcy, making a big move in a post-AI word, making the company work, investor concerns about pivots, why a good pivot feels like "coming home", and more. – Standard Capital is the AI-native Series A fund. Learn more at standardcap.com – About Dalton: Dalton Caldwell is Co-Founder and Partner of Standard Capital. He spent 12 years at Y Combinator, where he served as Managing Partner, worked across 25 YC batches, and advised more than 1,000 startups. His investments include Whatnot, Brex, GitLab, PostHog, Stock Space, Rappi, Razorpay, and Oklo. Before becoming an investor, Dalton founded imeem and App.net. About Michael: Michael Seibel is a Partner Emeritus at Y Combinator, where he served as Managing Partner of the early stage accelerator from 2014 - 2024. Michael also serves on the board of three companies: Reddit, Dropbox, and Kalshi. He moved to the bay area in 2006, and was a co-founder and CEO of two Y Combinator startups Justin.tv/Twitch (2007 - 2011) and Socialcam (2011 - 2012). In 2012 Socialcam sold to Autodesk Inc. for $60m and in 2014, under the leadership of Emmett Shear (CEO) and Kevin Lin (COO) Twitch sold to Amazon for $970m. – Are you an AI builder? Check out StandardDB. Discover offers, credits, tools, and partner programs from the StandardDB ecosystem.

Michael SeibelhostDalton Caldwellhost
Sep 14, 202623mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:29

    How YC office hours handle “Should we pivot?”

    1. MS

      It's never been easier or a better time to change your idea because of how fast you can grow. And if you're gonna re-roll, please don't get into pivot hell. Like, like [laughs] like, that's not actually obviously better. This is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're gonna talk about should you pivot? We've never been asked questions about startup pivoting-

    2. DC

      [laughs]

    3. MS

      ... before, so this is fresh, fresh content.

    4. DC

      I would say this is the most common topic that I got as a YC partner-

    5. MS

      Yeah

    6. DC

      ... uh, for someone that wanted to book office hours with me, and this would be like the title-

    7. MS

      Yes, yes

    8. DC

      ... of the office hours, what I want-

    9. MS

      Especially someone that wasn't your-

    10. DC

      Yeah

    11. MS

      ... someone you didn't fund. [laughs]

    12. DC

      Yeah, someone was like, "Dalton, I need to talk to you."

    13. MS

      Yeah, first in for this one. [laughs]

    14. DC

      And this would be, this would be the topic.

    15. MS

      Yes.

    16. DC

      And so I got very, um, practiced at doing this office hours, and I think something great about these videos is we can kinda give you, the audience, um-

    17. MS

      Yeah

    18. DC

      ... an office hours experience without, uh, meeting with all of you.

    19. MS

      Yes.

    20. DC

      So I think we'll kinda go from there, right?

    21. MS

      So let me try to ask you some kind of, uh, a setup question. So, um, what's the difference in kind of how you would take an office hour like this when you're talking to a founder who is maybe three or four months in and, and kind of afraid of their lack of progress versus a founder who was two years in? How, in your mind, were you calibrating slightly differently based on just that?

  2. 1:29 – 2:07

    The “doctor” approach: diagnose before prescribing a pivot

    1. DC

      The first thing that I would do, uh, my framework for this type of office hours, was I kinda would think of myself like a doctor.

    2. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. DC

      Where, you know, when you go to the doctor's office, you, you don't get out the prescription pad. At least not a good doctor.

    4. MS

      [laughs]

    5. DC

      You're not like, "Okay, well, here's your prescription." You know, that would be, I think, deeply unethical, I think would be the term-

    6. MS

      Yes

    7. DC

      ... for that. Um-

    8. MS

      I came in for a hurt shoulder.

    9. DC

      [laughs]

    10. MS

      Here's your shoulder surgery.

    11. DC

      Here's some pills. It's been great.

    12. MS

      [laughs] Yeah.

    13. DC

      Um, and instead what I would do is spend a large amount of time at the beginning of the office hours-

    14. MS

      Mm-hmm

    15. DC

      ... asking a lot of questions.

    16. MS

      Yes.

    17. DC

      Just like what a good doctor would do-

    18. MS

      Yes

    19. DC

      ... is they would wanna assess you. They would wanna look you all over. They would ask family history.

    20. MS

      Yep.

    21. DC

      There's just, like, all this context that you need-

    22. MS

      Yes

    23. DC

      ... to make a diagnosis as a doctor.

    24. MS

      Yes.

  3. 2:07 – 3:14

    Key diagnostic questions: backstory, alignment, reality check, and the “next best option”

    1. DC

      And so the way that I would diagnose a case of the pivots, um, would be [laughs] would be to ask, "Okay, remind me the backstory of the company."

    2. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. DC

      "How long have you guys been working on this idea?"

    4. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. DC

      "When did the founders come together?"

    6. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    7. DC

      "How much alignment do you have, uh, between the founders that you're working on the right idea?"

    8. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. DC

      "Objectively, how is it going? Do you agree objectively of how it's going?"

    10. MS

      Hmm.

    11. DC

      And then I would always like to ask, "What is your next best option?" So I would say, "Okay, so you're asking about pivoting. Do you have an idea, like, in the, in the can here? Or-

    12. MS

      Hmm

    13. DC

      ... are you just in the abstract-

    14. MS

      Pivoting into a blue ocean

    15. DC

      ... TBD.

    16. MS

      Yeah. [laughs]

    17. DC

      Um, 'cause again, on that point, just, let's just say that they said, "Oh, Dalton, we do have other ideas." I'd be, "Well, what are they? What are your top three?"

    18. MS

      Yeah.

    19. DC

      Because sometimes their top number one backup idea was phenomenally good.

    20. MS

      Yeah.

    21. DC

      [laughs] And they put a lot of time and thought into it.

    22. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    23. DC

      And so my diagnosis would be like, "Well, that sounds, it sounds like you're pretty high conviction on that idea, and you're-

    24. MS

      Yeah

    25. DC

      ... you've thought about it a lot. Maybe you should look at that," versus, "Oh, we have no other ideas. We're just asking you this very abstract question."

    26. MS

      Mm-hmm.

  4. 3:14 – 3:42

    A simple time-based heuristic: too early vs. too long stuck

    1. DC

      I would tend to be like, "Well, so I'll, I'll pause here." And so the, the way I think about this is there's, like, a decision tree of asking a ton of questions, uh, about the founder's context.

    2. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. DC

      And, and as per what you said a moment ago, Michael, if it's a company that's been in the batch for four weeks and has not talked to a single customer and has no other ideas, generally be like, "Yeah, you probably shouldn't pivot. Like, you should at least try."

    4. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. DC

      [laughs] But if you've been working on it for three years and it's going nowhere, yeah, you should, you should probably pivot, right?

  5. 3:42 – 4:43

    Two founder archetypes: fear-driven early pivots vs. informed pivots

    1. MS

      On average, founders know less about the problem that they're trying to solve than they think, and there's this kind of frame of, like, I'm gonna start this company because I know the right solution, which is, like, a helpful frame to convince yourself to, like, do the idiocy of starting a company. But the reality, in my mind, is that in the first couple years of a company, you're actually trying to figure out everything.

    2. DC

      Yeah.

    3. MS

      Like, you're trying to figure out what the customer's problem is. Can it be solved? Is it worth solving? Everything. And what I find is that I encounter, and this is very, very generalized, two types of founders. I encounter a type of founder who, like, once they realize their vision of the world is slightly different, um, than what the world's turning out to be, they get scared, and they're like, "This seems like a harder problem than I thought, but I think this problem over here is easier. I wanna kinda run away-

    4. DC

      Yeah

    5. MS

      ... from the hard." And that's kind of what I tend to see as the early pivoter.

  6. 4:43 – 6:18

    The “dentists” and other ‘easy’ pivots: chasing what feels simple

    1. DC

      100%. And, uh, the, let me give you the textbook example, and-

    2. MS

      Yes

    3. DC

      ... um, I mean this from a pr- place of love, audience, if any of you are working on this idea. This is not, I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but the classic one was s- company's working on some idea.

    4. MS

      Yep.

    5. DC

      And they're like, "Okay, we're gonna pivot. We're thinking dentists." Like, for some reason-

    6. MS

      Oh, God

    7. DC

      ... dentists was the thing where it seemed really easy.

    8. MS

      Dental offices?

    9. DC

      Yeah, like somehow-

    10. MS

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fill out the forms for you and the-

    11. DC

      They're like, "Yeah, this thing sounds hard-

    12. MS

      Yeah

    13. DC

      ... but I was asking ChatGPT, and I think we're going dentists."

    14. MS

      Yeah.

    15. DC

      And I'd be like, "Oh, another one of these." [laughs] That was like-

    16. MS

      Oh

    17. DC

      ... the classic pivot. But anyway-

    18. MS

      I thought you were gonna go the, the, uh, the user interview product.

    19. DC

      Yeah.

    20. MS

      That was another classic, uh, yeah.

    21. DC

      That was. And again, I'm sure there's some great dental startups.

    22. MS

      Sure.

    23. DC

      We love you. Like, no-

    24. MS

      For sure

    25. DC

      ... no diss. I just... That one was a great example of a startup idea that feels easy. For whatever reason-

    26. MS

      Yes

    27. DC

      ... a lot of founders-

    28. MS

      Yes

    29. DC

      ... searching for an easier startup idea-

    30. MS

      Yes

  7. 6:18 – 6:55

    A practical rubric for dev tools: do you actually use your own product?

    1. DC

      I think that's fair. Uh, another, another rubric I would do in my diagnosis is if it was a developer tool-

    2. MS

      Mm-hmm

    3. DC

      ... I would say, "Okay, are you all using this yourselves?"

    4. MS

      Yeah. Oh, God, that's a big one.

    5. DC

      And it was, it was actually surprising how many companies building a developer tool could not be bothered to use their own product to build their own company.

    6. MS

      That was the whole thesis-

    7. DC

      [laughs]

    8. MS

      ... about pivoting or doing a developer tool. It's like, if you're a developer [laughs] here's the area you know really well. [laughs]

    9. DC

      Yeah, and someone's like, "We spent six months building this AI coding thing or whatever," and I'm like, "Well, cool. Are you, are you using it on a daily basis?" And they're like-

    10. MS

      "No, we're using Cursor."

    11. DC

      "... You know, we'll get back to you on that."

    12. MS

      Yeah.

    13. DC

      Um, that was generally a sign that it probably wasn't the right space for them, or at the very least-

    14. MS

      Yes

    15. DC

      ... they're not on the right track.

  8. 6:55 – 8:48

    AI changes the pivot calculus: assumptions break faster, opportunity cost rises

    1. MS

      Yeah. So let's just say everything we've talked about before, I think I believe in the pre-AI world and the post-AI world. Let's talk about how the AI world changes this concept of pivoting. One of the things that I see is that a lot of hypotheses that founders had about how the world works for companies that were started, you know, let's say before February this year. That was my awakening. Maybe it was-

    2. DC

      It was, like, December, but clo-

    3. MS

      December last year

    4. DC

      ... Yeah, it was, like, the Claude code, uh-

    5. MS

      Right

    6. DC

      ... Yeah, yeah.

    7. MS

      Maybe AI is kind of proving some of those hypotheses wrong, and so let's talk about a company where it's basically like their set of assumptions, oh, it takes 100 developers to build blank, or it takes a lot of humans to do Y, or the best we can do to improve a process is improve the UI and some screens and some workflows. What do we think about pivoting to some, to those companies where maybe, like, the core assumption's just wrong now?

    8. DC

      Yep.

    9. MS

      And, like, maybe we don't... They don't have to be two years in. Like, they're going out to customers now, and their base of customers are just like, "This is categorically not what's going on." Ha- But maybe they've raised some money, and they're excited, and da, da, da, da. Like, how do you think about that kind of case?

    10. DC

      This is very nuanced feedback, and I'm glad I have video to do this 'cause I don't know how I would tweet this. This is-

    11. MS

      Yeah, yeah, yeah

    12. DC

      ... way too subtle of a point.

    13. MS

      Yeah.

    14. DC

      So here's what I would say. It's never been easier or a better time to change your idea because of how fast you can grow-

    15. MS

      Yep

    16. DC

      ... and the growth rates are real. And so you're taking a bigger opportunity cost than ever to keep grinding on an idea that structurally was rendered obsolete by Claude Code or what have you, right? It's super clear.

    17. MS

      Can I extend that? I would also argue that AI probably opens the opportunity aperture, so it's probably was m- more-

    18. DC

      Yes

    19. MS

      ... opportunity post-AI than pre-AI.

  9. 8:48 – 10:13

    Avoiding “pivot hell”: the danger of weekly re-rolls and hype chasing

    1. DC

      And the nuance here, though, is I would be really sad if people were watching this video and it causes them to get into pivot hell. [laughs]

    2. MS

      Yeah, no, yeah.

    3. DC

      And let me define pivot hell. It's where you change your idea every week-

    4. MS

      Yeah

    5. DC

      ... and you just rotate through whatever you read about on social media, and you have no conviction.

    6. MS

      Yeah.

    7. DC

      You're just chasing hype, and you're... Yeah, like you have no conviction. You have no ideas. You're just a vessel for what you read about on X.com.

    8. MS

      Yeah.

    9. DC

      And-

    10. MS

      And what just raised money

    11. DC

      ... it would be so sad if someone watched this video and I accidentally got them into pivot hell.

    12. MS

      Yeah.

    13. DC

      And so the nuance here is it's such a fine line. It's such a delicate balance for the viewer to, yeah, you know, it's not working. You should probably roll the dice again. Like, you get a re-roll in the age of AI.

    14. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    15. DC

      And if you're gonna re-roll, please don't get into pivot hell. Like, like, [laughs] like, that's not actually obviously better. And so again, there's some, some feedback I would give or there's, there's some structure that I would give someone when they're choosing ideas, which is try to find an idea that you know something about. Try to find an idea that you can get early customers on. Try to find an idea that is not just a regurgitation of who's raising lots of money. Like, try to avoid the obvious-

    16. MS

      Yes

    17. DC

      ... you know-

    18. MS

      Yes

    19. DC

      ... gravitational pull towards pivot hell, which again, is a very bad place to be. It's better, it's honestly better to be working on kind of a not great idea than be in pivot hell, which is-

    20. MS

      Well, yeah, yeah, yes

    21. DC

      ... very nuanced, again, what, what we're saying is-

  10. 10:13 – 12:38

    Why founder-domain connection matters (Twitch story)

    1. MS

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, very nuanced. I think that if we could blind poll a lot of early stage founders and they would never get attributed back to them, I think a common belief is that most of the companies that win, those founders kind of like played around in the sand and figured something out, and this whole idea of knowing something about what you're working on is not true. Like, the stories are much more like, "This seemed cool, and I tried it out, and I just ran a bunch of experiments, and this ended up working," versus like, "I actually had some kind of deep connection to this idea space, something about it." And I think what's so frustrating to me is that when I look at the winners, I can always tie, or more, w- way more often than not, I can tie some deep connection to what the founder was into. And you know, I think we lived this personally in Twitch, and it was, it was weird to watch 'cause I think there was this initial phase where, like, we were trying to make celebrities, and Justin-

    2. DC

      Yeah

    3. MS

      ... was the first one, and he wanted to be a celebrity. Like, we were solving his problem. Then there was this kind of middle phase where all we cared about was graphs and metrics and are more people coming to the website. And then there was the phase that worked, which was kind of Emmett caring about video games, and he somewhat irrationally cares about video games.

    4. DC

      Yep.

    5. MS

      And it's so funny when I go through so many stories of startups, and I kind of get to the meat of like, "So why are you doing this?" And then there's some like, "Oh, my dad was a pharmacist," or, "I grew up in a restaurant." Like, you know, there was like an actual... And I always think to myself, if you're competing against somebody where you're just doing the random walk of what sounds like a good idea and they're doing something that like-

    6. DC

      If they're doing their life's work and you're just, like-

    7. MS

      [laughs]

    8. DC

      ... hanging out-

    9. MS

      Trying to get lucky

    10. DC

      ... who's gonna win?

    11. MS

      Yeah.

    12. DC

      [laughs]

    13. MS

      And so it's, like, so it, it doesn't seem counterintuitive to say this, but it's like- Your best dice roll is in a game you know how to play. Like, your best shot, even if it seems out of vogue, is probably something that you know something about before you sat down to think about startup ideas. And like, I don't think people like to hear that, 'cause they're like, "I grew up in a middle-class family, and I went to a good school, and I had no problems." How do you advise someone on how to figure out what the next thing is if the th- you're convinced-

    14. DC

      Right

    15. MS

      ... the thing isn't working?

  11. 12:38 – 13:50

    Treat pivoting like a personal tendency: pivotitis vs. never-pivoting

    1. DC

      There, there's two things I would do. Number one, my diagnosis would be to understand if their natural state is to pivot too much or too little.

    2. MS

      Mm.

    3. DC

      And so do you have a case of pivotitis?

    4. MS

      Yeah.

    5. DC

      Or do you have a case of, like-

    6. MS

      Yeah, I don't have a name for it. All right

    7. DC

      ... uh, the, the opposite.

    8. MS

      The opposite.

    9. DC

      And if someone was already pivoting every week, I'd actually prescribe to them, "Don't pivot for, uh, three months."

    10. MS

      Yeah.

    11. DC

      Like, force yourself to work on this long enough to learn something.

    12. MS

      Yes.

    13. DC

      'Cause right now, you're getting such surface level insights-

    14. MS

      Yeah

    15. DC

      ... to just work on an idea for a week and then change again.

    16. MS

      You're learning nothing.

    17. DC

      You're learning nothing.

    18. MS

      Yeah.

    19. DC

      This is, you're wasting-

    20. MS

      Waste of time [laughs]

    21. DC

      ... your time to pivot every week.

    22. MS

      Yeah.

    23. DC

      So, you know, my prescription is work, pick any idea, I don't even care what it is, but force yourself to work on it for three months-

    24. MS

      Yep

    25. DC

      ... so that you have enough time to learn something.

    26. MS

      What about the opposite?

    27. DC

      And now the opposite would be they've been working on something for two years and it's still not working at all. And so I'd be like, "Just do something else." Like, it'd be, the prescription is just try some stuff-

    28. MS

      Mm

    29. DC

      ... because your natural order is to, is to never try anything new. And also, that advice is always much harder for a hard tech company-

    30. MS

      True

  12. 13:50 – 16:28

    Platform shifts and inertia: the iPhone analogy for the AI moment

    1. MS

      So let's wrap this up with kind of two interesting thoughts, and I, I will desperately try not to make them depressing, but here I go. One observation that I think we've both shared is that there were a large number of mobile startups, um, funded pre the iPhone App Store. There were folks that were building on top of BlackBerry, on top of feature phones, on top of Palm OS, on top of Microsoft. Like, all of these were, were smartphone platforms pre iOS. And as far as I can tell, none of the big mobile winners started until after the new platform was adopted. And so what gives there, right? 'Cause I think that if I'm a first principles thinker, I would say, here's a company who already understands the power of smartphones, who already has a software, a, a s- a product live in smartphones, who has funding, who has engineers. Wouldn't they have so much more of an advantage-

    2. DC

      Yeah

    3. MS

      ... against someone who's starting fresh now that they have an iPhone in their hand? They're like, "Oh, I, here's what I wish it could do."

    4. DC

      I think if I wanted to engage with that thinking, it's that it's a disadvantage to have inertia working on the wrong thing, and that if you spent a lot of time and effort porting your mobile game to BlackBerry-

    5. MS

      Yeah

    6. DC

      ... when the iPhone comes out, you're gonna have a lot of cope to not basically just reboot your whole company.

    7. MS

      Yeah.

    8. DC

      Like, the day the iPhone comes out, you're like, "Okay, well, we're gonna lay everyone off, and we're gonna throw away all the code we spent years building, and we're gonna admit to our investors we were wrong." And I think there's probably some founders who have the wherewithal to do that.

    9. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    10. DC

      Um, most people don't. I think where you're going with this is that's kinda happened with AI, where a lot of companies that have been around for a while-

    11. MS

      Mm-hmm

    12. DC

      ... they need to either-

    13. MS

      Yeah

    14. DC

      ... be like, "Well, we're just rebooting everything. You know, like, all that stuff that we spent millions of dollar- all that code we wrote, uh, it's worthless, and it can be replicated in two months with Claude code. Thanks for playing." [laughs]

    15. MS

      [laughs]

    16. DC

      And, and, I mean, and basically you have to almost, like, declare emotional bankruptcy on your existing business-

    17. MS

      Yes

    18. DC

      ... to truly reboot it.

    19. MS

      Yes.

    20. DC

      That is such a hard thing to do, versus a brand-new company, there is no emotion. They're like, "Cool, we just started yesterday."

    21. MS

      Yeah.

    22. DC

      And so-

    23. MS

      [laughs]

    24. DC

      ... it's almost like an existing company has to, to put themselves on a level playing field with a brand-new company-

    25. MS

      Yes

    26. DC

      ... they have to go through the emotional state of letting all that stuff go, and letting go of all the sunk costs before. Most people can't, won't choose not to do that, right, man?

  13. 16:28 – 21:08

    How later-stage companies can reboot: secondary, break-even discipline, and bolder moves

    1. MS

      Like, what I'm hoping is that this cycle is different. And, and here's what I've seen, um, and I've got a couple companies in the back of my mind. One thing I've seen is that a lot more companies, um, that kinda got later stage pre-AI, the founders took some secondary off the table. And, like, in a weird way, that's kind of helpful. Like, in a weird way, that kind of gives them the freedom to say, like, "I can take a bigger bet, because if this didn't work out, at least I already got some secondary off the table." So I'm seeing that. And then second, I think that a lot of founders, maybe due to some of our advice, I don't know, when they went through COVID and they saw the crazy times, they got financially more responsible.

    2. DC

      Yep.

    3. MS

      So it's a lot easier to think about these big moves when you're running your business at break even, versus, like, you've got this train, and if you can't keep towing the line-

    4. DC

      Yeah. If you're like, "Oh, no, the board's gonna fire me."

    5. MS

      Yeah. [laughs]

    6. DC

      Like, if you feel like the, the hatchet's hanging over your head-

    7. MS

      Harder

    8. DC

      ... it's much harder to be like, "Hey, all the stuff we did is worthless."

    9. MS

      [laughs]

    10. DC

      Like, like, that's a much harder pitch.

    11. MS

      Harder pitch.

    12. DC

      Yeah.

    13. MS

      Harder pitch.

    14. DC

      Harder to explain that to your board.

    15. MS

      And so I've seen a couple companies kind of in this position, um, really reboot.

    16. DC

      Yep.

    17. MS

      And, like, what's fun about watching it is that, like, in some ways, if they can get their mind around this cope, it's an advantage. Like, their ambition level's high. They actually are good at what they do. Like, they got this business so far. They're actually kind of, like, talented. Oftentimes, if they're AI-pulled, they can kind of look at all the stuff they've done before and see, "Oh, we could've done it like this," and they can actually package that up and use it.

    18. DC

      Yep.

    19. MS

      And oftentimes they had time to learn about some customers, some markets, some problems. You have some insights. So I hope, and, and maybe I'm, I'm optimistic that this cycle's different, but I think that if I was a founder of a company between, let's say, uh- 10 million in revenue and 300 million in revenue, and most of that business was built on pre-AI assumptions, this is a moment, right? Like, five years from now, you're gonna look back at this moment and you ask yourself some really hard questions. What, like, I might argue that, like, if you're a company at 500 to a billion in revenue and good economics and maybe you can IPO in the next year or two, maybe you can, like, sneak over the bar. [laughs] But if you're n- not there, that bar is moving, and I think sometimes I talk to founders and, and, and I'm just like, "Look, you gotta make a bigger move than maybe you think."

    20. DC

      Yep.

    21. MS

      And it's so hard.

    22. DC

      And it's almost like they know it. They just feel unable to make the move. They're like, "Yeah, I know, I know, but-"

    23. MS

      But this, but that.

    24. DC

      There's a but, right?

    25. MS

      Yeah, yeah. Like, if they were advising another company, they would tell them to make the move. [laughs]

    26. DC

      Yeah, yeah.

    27. MS

      And it's, it's, it's hard, but I'll tell you, folks are doing it. Folks who are starting products at zero revenue-

    28. DC

      Yeah

    29. MS

      ... that have tens of millions of revenue, and, like, what you mentioned before, AI's a powerful tool. You can grow fast.

    30. DC

      Sure can.

  14. 21:08 – 23:45

    What a good pivot feels like: “coming home” to your unique expertise

    1. DC

      No extra points. And I guess my, my final thought for more early stage founders-

    2. MS

      Yes

    3. DC

      ... that I would always give people, there's a, there's an old video where I talk about pivoting. It's still on the, the YC channel. I think it's called, like, All About Pivoting.

    4. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. DC

      And one of the, one of my comments is the best pivots are getting closer to the founder's zone of expertise.

    6. MS

      Yes, yes.

    7. DC

      A good pivot feels like coming home.

    8. MS

      Yes.

    9. DC

      And so what I would say is if you're at this precipice of pivoting, you should ask yourself, "What makes me special?"

    10. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. DC

      "What am I best in the world at?" And sometimes you don't know. Uh, something that I would do as a YC partner a lot is tell the founder what made them special. I would look at their LinkedIn, I would look at their resume, and I'd be like, "Wow, you were writing papers about this, like, really esoteric topic-

    12. MS

      Yeah

    13. DC

      ... as an undergraduate. How about that?"

    14. MS

      Yeah.

    15. DC

      And they'd be like, "Oh, I never thought about that, Dalton. I was too busy, you know, worrying about dentists." And I'd be like, "Well, like, seems like you know a lot about this thing you were writing papers about."

    16. MS

      And how much do you know about dentists again? [laughs]

    17. DC

      Right. Seriously. And, and it was, sometimes when you're in your own little world-

    18. MS

      Yeah

    19. DC

      ... you forget-

    20. MS

      Yeah

    21. DC

      ... what makes you special and different and what you're a world expert at. And so I would just really encourage the audience-

    22. MS

      Yes

    23. DC

      ... to do that inventory of your upbringing, of where you're from, of the jobs you've had, even internships you've had.

    24. MS

      Yep.

    25. DC

      And you might have more super elite expertise than you realize.

    26. MS

      Yes.

    27. DC

      And that's such a great source to move towards and not away from.

    28. MS

      I love that thought because what most founders will do, will say, "None of those things are hot right now."

    29. DC

      [laughs]

    30. MS

      And it's like, yes, we're aiming for it looking good 10 years from now.

Episode duration: 23:46

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