During our monthly Office Hours, we got a great question. Is it a good or bad thing to keep pitching VCs different ideas? Here are a few example founder types I see.

Stubborn on one nice-to-have idea

I have met some founders that stay stuck on one idea. They either don’t solicit enough feedback to hear why customers do not like it, or they don’t follow The Mom Test and just hear everyone say they like the idea and believe it. They tend to ignore feedback that contradicts what they want to hear. There are great founders that sometimes get stuck on one nice-to-have idea and miss the huge opportunity cost of moving on to a better market/problem.

New idea every month

On the other extreme, I meet some founders who are pitching me a new idea every month. Each time they move past what they learned about the previous idea to quickly tell me why this is the next big thing. The cycle then repeats again and again. For these founders, it is hard to distinguish what is real versus chasing the next shiny object without focus or the commitment to deep understanding of a space.

Ideal balance

Pivots are required to build a business. But what are you really learning that shows you can go deep to truly understand the problem/market/customers and then also apply those learnings to whether you stop, pivot, or keep going? Many of the best founders we worked with had previous startups that did not work out. That can be great, assuming you can acquire and apply those learnings into your next startup idea.

I love hearing the insights founders have gained at each stage to drive their decisions. Insights from talking to potential customers are the best kind! So pivoting ideas is a likely scenario; just be careful staying stubborn on one idea or jumping too quickly between ideas without spending the time to go deep.