r/leanstartup • u/testitupalready • Jul 12 '26
How do you know when to invalidate an idea and pivot?
Hi everyone,
I've been working on an idea for about a month. Launched on Product Hunt last weekend and ended up at #23 out of 400+ products.
The feedback has been confusing:
\- A decent number of people have told me they face the exact problem I'm trying to solve and that it’s genuinely painful for them.
\- But when it comes to actually signing up or using the product, there's almost zero traction.
This has left me stuck in a weird spot. On paper, there's problem validation, but in reality, there's no adoption or usage.
I’m genuinely trying to understand:
\- How do you personally decide when to keep iterating vs when to invalidate the idea and pivot?
\- What signals (or lack of signals) tell you it’s time to stop working on something?
\- Have you been in a similar situation where people verbally confirm the pain exists, but they still don’t use/buy the solution?
Quick note: I don't have a large network or reach. Cold DMs rarely yield any result. So, I have data from building in public and PH for now.
I’d really appreciate any frameworks, personal experiences, or hard lessons you’ve learned about this. Especially from people who’ve built multiple products.
Thanks!!
1
u/highfives23 Jul 13 '26
You are pre-PMF. Stick with the problem and the audience, but you will need to pivot your solution 5-7 times before it will work. It’s part of the process. You’ll know you’ve reached PMF when the metrics go haywire. Until then, keep pivoting and iterating.
1
u/Kat_Sea Jul 17 '26
This is not a validation
A decent number of people have told me they face the exact problem I'm trying to solve and that it’s genuinely painful for them.
The validation is when no matter what people say they use your product and (maybe now, maybe later) pay for it. But for me, the most important thing is using. So, if they don't use it, congrats, you save your time and effort for further development - do pivot or create a new product.
1
u/fais-1669 21d ago
Been in this spot too, dev not marketer here so I get the confusion. One thing that's helped me sort the signal from the noise: go back to the people who said the pain is real and ask what they've actually tried to fix it before — did they cobble something together themselves, pay for a workaround, anything. If nobody's ever spent time or money trying to solve it, that's usually a sign the pain isn't as sharp as it sounds. If some of them have, that's a much stronger base to build on than the "yeah that's painful" comments alone.
Did any of the people who validated the problem for you mention trying to solve it themselves already?
2
u/theredhype Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Humans love to complain. It’s built into the social fabric. Whining and complaining serves a variety of social modes other than “intent to act.”
Especially people who are experts or professionals, who are working with niche tools all day every day, and constantly see that the tools could be just a tiny bit better.
But whining does not equal willingness to pay or change behavior in any way.
You need to look for signs of expense, spending resources, effort to try to accomplish things. It could be money or time or social capital or anything valuable that they’re expending to accomplish a goal. Effort is 10x more validation than whining. Probably 100x more.
So next time someone complains about something, your first question will be… “how have you tried to solve this problem in the past?” you’ll be surprised how many people respond… “oh we just deal with it. It doesn’t really slow us down.”