Bet on a Space You Care About, Not a Specific Idea

Conventional wisdom that as WRONG as it gets.

Your startup doesn't die when you run out of money. It dies when you run out of emotional energy to pivot one more time.

And nothing drains that energy faster than being wedded to a specific idea. Especially if it’s an idea you’re not particularly passionate about.

I chatted to Han Wang, Co-Founder & CEO of Mintlify about this. He had to learn this the hard way:

With his previous startup, he was working 18-hour days on a community platform for customer success managers.

Good traction. Decent metrics.

But one night, he woke up and realized:

"I just didn't really care about the folks we were building it for."

It’s hard to recover from that. Not too long after, they shut down the startup.

When they decided to start Mintlify - Han’s next startup - him and his co-founder decided to pick a space they were super passionate about (developers) vs a specific idea.

The early days were all but easy - they ended up pivoting 8 times during their first 14 months.

"It literally felt like chewing glass."

But they didn’t quit. Why?

Because they were building for people they understood and cared about.

Each failure taught them something about developers. Each pivot got them closer.

Compare that to building for people you don't relate to. Every rejection stings twice—once for the failure, once for wasting time on an audience you’re not passionate about.

"The real runway of a company is the number of pivots you have left in you."

Thus, when he talks to potential future founders, Han recommends the following:

1. Pick your who, not your what: Choose an audience whose problems genuinely interest you. People you'd spend time with regardless of business potential.

2. Define your space broadly but meaningfully: "Developer tools" is good. "Software" is too broad. "Code documentation" is too narrow.

3. Give yourself permission to be wrong about solutions: Your best ideas might be the ones you're most skeptical about initially.

4. Use pivots as learning mechanisms: Each failed attempt should narrow your search space and inform the next experiment.

Last but not least, don’t expect to nail it on the first attempt.

Many startups need 3-10 smaller and larger iterations (larger ones being pivots) until they find product-market fit.

That's 3-10 emotional cycles of hope, effort, failure, and recovery.

If you don't genuinely care about the space you're in, you'll quit by attempt #3. When you're solving problems for people you care about, attempt #8 still feels like progress, not punishment.

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Enjoyed reading this?

Then check out my conversation on the focal podcast with Han Wang, the Co-founder & CEO of Mintlify, who truly knows IF, WHEN, and HOW to pivot with speed and conviction. A lesson he learned the hard way: Mintlify pivoted 8 pivots in 14 months before finding Product-Market-Fit.

Youtube | Apple Podcast | Spotify

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