How do you know when an idea isn't worth pursuing anymore?
Entrepreneurship is all about hustle, grit, and determination toward a goal. But how do you tell if your idea isn't worth pursuing? When you're spinning your wheels in a circle and going nowhere?
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This is such a hard question. I have struggled with this and I think every entrepreneur has that is struggling with a failing business. I think you really have to decide for yourself. Take in all the data and info that you have about how the business is going. Do you have product/market fit? Is there other options that seem possible? Other avenues that you could take? Have you tried long enough? These are all the questions to think through.
I think there are definitely some times when you are in the trough of sorrows but you just have to push through but there seems to be other times when you're in the trough of sorrows because the business just isn't going to work. It's hard to tell.
There isn't an easy answer here.
How long is long enough? I'd think that that's highly dependent on various factors, like the type of market, how many people are working at it, full-time/part-time, etc.
I agree, lots of factors to think through for that. So again it comes down to your judgement. This is where having advisors that knows you and your business well can come in handy.
This is what I'm trying to do right now! I'm trying the following:
I haven't completed step 1 yet but basically if I demo a prototype and they're not willing to pay for it then I either don't have a product worth paying for (yet) or I don't have a good idea. It all depends on their answers during the survey.
I think steps 1-2 are so important that they can't ever be skipped.
You're not only validating your idea; you're validating your go-to-market route, you're validating that the market is accessible, and you're validating that you have a natural captive audience when you've finally built the MVP.
If you can't even interview them, you can't sell them. Period.
You'd be building the MVP, and EVEN if the market exists, you have no way to access the market, and you'd be back to square one again after 6 months building the product. I think there are only a small subset of markets/niches that an Indie Hacker can pursue. And anything too ambitious/big is likely to lead to immense demoralization and ultimately failure.
Very well said :)
Honestly, you never really know if it would have taken off if you had persisted. In my experience, most entrepreneurs quit too soon rather than too late. Most startups require an immense amount of upfront non-scalable effort just to get it off the ground and overcome its initial inertia, and then even more and then some just to grow to a meaningful MRR.
If you've validated the idea, I'd give it a 3-6 months window from launch to see if any meaningful progress is made. This can be leads, demos, sales, new actionable insights, if there are any positive uptick on those metrics, I'd say it's justifiable to invest more time and effort and see where it goes.
It's only when the response is lukewarm that you probably need to step away.
Hey @stervy,
This is a great and difficult question to answer. But here are my three cents:
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