By Evgenii Khafizov
For a startup, pivoting and shifting gears isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a vital tool for survival and represents the challenging path a startup takes to find its product-market fit.
But it can also be nerve-wracking to change direction and re-evaluate your product. With that in mind, here are some lessons about pivoting that I learned from my own experience evolving my company’s product from a collaboration platform for a handful of clients managing remarks to a full-fledged product lifecycle management system used by hundreds of companies.
Experimentation over fixed answers
Our product underwent at least five pivots, steadily shifting its strategic direction. Each pivot was grounded in rigorous hypothesis testing and results analysis, a process fully consistent with classic product development methodology.
Through successes and setbacks, we learned to spot when to pivot by evaluating the ideal customer profile — considering product fit, market conditions, real pain points, willingness to pay and alignment with the client’s business model.
Small teams, niche market
Unit economics forms the bedrock of any business model. When your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value don’t reconcile, it’s a clear signal that something is amiss with either your audience or your product.
We initially launched with the hypothesis that a collaboration platform would be the perfect tool for advertising agencies to streamline 3D mockup approvals with their clients. Meetings with art directors indeed confirmed their interest. However, “liking” something doesn’t equate to a willingness to pay.
Self-sufficient or unwilling-to-pay customers
When we shifted our focus to GameDev, we encountered a highly polarized market. On one side, major AAA studios were self-sufficient, operating with their own expensive, established solutions. On the other, indie developers — despite managing their assets in a chaotic fashion — showed little willingness to pay for a structured approach or specialized tools.
Our internal testing showed that even the small number of indies who did purchase licenses didn’t provide a stable revenue stream; their sheer volume was too low. Ultimately, the business model became unfeasible due to a core audience unwilling or unable to pay.
Meeting demand requires extensive product reengineering
Even in the presence of demand, a startup must realistically evaluate the barriers to entry, the necessary resources for product adaptation, and the strength of competing solutions already in the market.
Through customer development interviews with designers and technologists, we uncovered two significant barriers. Firstly, our product would require substantial reengineering to properly handle their highly specific 3D model formats (for instance, CAD files used for garment patterns). Secondly, the market was already densely populated by highly specialized competitors.
The resources needed to successfully “break into” these specific niches far exceeded our startup’s capabilities. The perceived risk was simply too high compared to the potential gains.
Lack of a recurring pain point
In SaaS, frequent product use is vital to build habits, gather data and boost paid conversions. Growing a stable B2B user base is tougher than monetizing it; regular free use proves value, but the challenge is making users willing to pay.
However, pilot projects revealed that point clouds and 3D models quickly became outdated during construction. Engineers didn’t trust the data and rarely used the platform for analyzing the situation on the construction site. Usage occurred at most a few times a month.
We received this signal after a series of customer development interviews with early adopters who had shown interest in the platform’s initial version. Despite their enthusiastic feedback (literally “wow!” and “amazing!”), the product’s usage frequency was extremely low.
Where large players are inefficient
An ideal customer profile doesn’t merely provide a general overview of a target audience segment; it allows for a deep dive into the specific pain points that urgently need to be addressed.
Naturally, we understood that attempting to compete with giants like Siemens Teamcenter or SolidWorks PDM, or product data management, at the outset would be futile. After consulting with PDM experts and conducting market research, we identified a promising niche where larger players were proving ineffective.
Failed hypotheses: Not setbacks, but valuable sources of information
Of course, focus and alignment with product vision are crucial. But it’s vital never to forget that the main objective is to create an innovative tool that comprehensively solves the client’s problem.
We need to build a product that users genuinely want to use every day.
Evgenii Khafizov is a co-founder of Sibe.io and an expert in startups and business development. He has helped companies streamline product lifecycles by replacing static documents with real-time, collaborative 3D models.
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