I’m Marie, my startup just pivoted and rebranded, AMA 🔥

@ronaldf91305352 Thanks Ronald!

Hi @chiew_soon_aik Totally understand your surprise, we were very bullish on the opportunity we were pursuing and we didn't have to walk away from it, we chose to. Said another way, we could have kept going with document search and built that business and been happy. But we found a much more appealing opportunity in document access control. In terms of what we would do differently to ensure a higher success rate, we wouldn't do anything differently. We wouldn't be where we are today without things being exactly as they were. Businesses evolve and it all happens based on learning, so in my opinion the pivot was a normal part of growing and building a startup. I also answered a similar question to yours here: https://www.producthunt.com/disc... Also stay tuned for more insightful and transparent updates soon :)

@rxmedsondemand Thanks Deman!

@yunling_wang Hi Yunling. We're still servicing those existing customers, the only change they've experienced is the new brand name, so there wasn't anything to communicate to them. We aren't focused on adding more customers to the Chrome extension at this time, though. Had we gotten rid of our document search Chrome app, we would have communicated to them about it so they'd know we were winding it down. Our Chrome app is also a totally free product, so this makes any transition a bit easier.

@nollfyra Hey Jonathan! Great question. We're a small team of just under 20 at the moment, and Hiten and I are the two folks who are working with customers on a daily basis. He and I had to take some time to get good with the pivot and make sure it was the right thing for the business. Plus work closely with our CTO to make sure we weren't being crazy and had the ability to get there from a technical standpoint. And then we were able to get everyone else on board. Nira is super centered around customer obsession, so communicating changes to the team is very straightforward. At the time, we shared the customer learnings in enough detail to help the team get on board with the new direction. This is something we do when we’re pivoting, and also every time we iterate existing features or work on new ones. Here are a few of the questions we answered for the team: - Who is the target customer and/or user? - What problem does the customer have? - How painful is their problem? - How does the customer describe the problem? - Are our target customers willing to pay us to solve this problem? We did have 2 people leave the team because they didn't want to work on the new product, which was expected since not everyone can buy in to a totally new direction and sometimes people are bummed that the things they worked on either won't see the light of day or won't be the primary focus of the company anymore. Not everyone will be ready for a change in direction and some people will leave because of it. As for reorganizing the team, the changes we've made aren't a result of pivoting, but rather are born from needing to grow the business because of the scale of the opportunity we've hit on. We've been hiring a lot more engineers and we promoted a few of the team members to create focus areas within engineering so we can build more efficiently and faster.

@sanchit_korgaonkar Hi Sanchit! The one insight was tremendous customer pull! We had an inkling of an idea, that came from - surprise surprise - a customer use case :) You can read about it more in my response to Omer Perchik. Once we drew up some designs and started sharing them with potential customers, we realized the problem of document access control was incredibly painful. By the time we had a working prototype, we knew we really had no choice but to go after solving the problem. It was a really simple decision in that sense, because we had all the evidence we needed from customer demand. The decision matrix for us went a bit like this: - Customer Need - Is there a customer problem and need? The problem was there and super painful. We had folks lined up to use our product, and had interest from large customers and hyper-growth companies. It was very clear, and the more we dug in, the more conviction we had to pivot. - Technical Chops - Did we have what it would take to build this product? And do it really well? The answer was absolutely yes! We had learned all about working with APIs from the search app (we integrated with 24 collaboration apps). And we had a ton of knowledge that we'd learned over the years that we could use on the document access control product. We basically had years of experience, knowledge and tech that fit perfectly with the new direction. - Our Interest - We as a team had to be interested in the new direction. Or else, why build it? We were already in the document space, so it was an easy switch. We also love solving customer problems, so in that sense it was so so easy to shift our focus, since the customer problem was clear. And very painful for customers!

@gaurav_jindal1 Hi Guarav, What are the cautious steps you are taking now while pivoting into a different idea? I haven't ever thought about what we’re doing as taking cautious steps. If you’re worried about the direction you are going in and trying to be cautious, I would recommend getting more evidence and validating/invalidating your idea through research including customer development interviews and competitor research. How’s it different compared to the previous idea? Nothing is really different, we’re always focused on customer problems and needs. The similarities from what we did before and what we’re doing now is in the fact that we’ve always been customer obsessed and that’s what drives our decision making. At what stage do we know that things are not going in the right direction? When whatever you were doing is not likely to work, even if you were to build all the things you think would make it work. This type of evaluation is not simply done with data, you’re trying to get as much signal as you can about what you’ve built and are planning on building next. Again, as I mentioned above, the way to do that is by doing a ton of research constantly to ensure what you’re doing is best for the customers. And then being nimble enough to change directions as you see things not working and also as you see things working.

Hi @harry_woods How did I manage the transition from Corporate to Startup? Honestly... I didn't really think about it. I just did the work I needed to do and learned from everything and everyone around me. I didn't have any issues or struggles and overall it was an incredibly easy flex for me. I think the more we focus on the differences and changes, the more we might create issues that don't exist. The best way to handle these types of transitions is to keep a beginner's mind and continuously learn. What did I find as really valuable experience that I brought with me to my companies? Honestly, I'd say everything I learned and experienced before I started Nira (and the other products we made along the way) was incredibly valuable. Even my MA in English Literature taught me how to spot patterns, analyze and synthesize information, communicate in a clear and thoughtful way, and much more. :)

Hi @gver, When we pivoted to FYI in the first place, I shared a lot about how we did customer interviews and managed the entire process of discovering the opportunity. Here’s one of the blog posts that will help you: https://www.userinterviews.com/b...

Hi @niall_o_c1! There is one thing that matters more than anything else on a remote team. If people are unable to communicate effectively verbally and in writing - like documents and Slack messages - then the company would be better off being in the same office. Here are a bunch of tips that we gathered from remote workers on how to avoid communication pitfalls: https://nira.com/remote-work-tip...