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Mastering the pivot playbook after 14 months of chewing on glass.
Han Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Mintlify, knows pivoting better than pretty much anyone. Mintlify pivoted 8 times during their first 14 months before finding Product-Market-Fit and eventually raising > $20M from a16z, Bain Capital Ventures, and YC.
While those 14 months felt like “chewing on glass”, Han learned a lot of valuable lessons he shared with me during our conversation, including why to bet on a space you care about, not a specific idea, if, when, and how to pivot, and why speed is your only advantage
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
00:00 - You really don't know what the market wants
01:24 - Why build for an idea space, not a specific idea
03:28 - Waking up and realizing you don't care about your customers
06:32 - The 8 pivots that led to Mintlify
10:24 - Figstack: 5,000 users on day one, then complete failure
13:55 - Pivoting 3 days before the YC interview
17:26 - Retention is everything - virality means nothing
26:45 - Building Mintlify over a weekend out of desperation
31:33 - When you're embarrassed to use your own product
34:07 - Ship fast or die - the real MVP mindset
36:51 - How to know when to pivot vs persist
40:00 - 14 months of chewing glass before success
45:36 - How to recognize product-market fit in one week
49:05 - Launching without an edit button and still closing sales
53:04 - Why falling in love with ideas kills startups
55:07 - Throw 100 darts fast vs calculating 2 perfect throws
Han Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Mintlify, knows pivoting better than pretty much anyone. Mintlify pivoted 8 times during their first 14 months before finding Product-Market-Fit and eventually raising > $20M from a16z, Bain Capital Ventures, and YC.
While those 14 months felt like “chewing on glass”, Han learned a lot of valuable lessons he shared with me during our conversation, including why to bet on a space you care about, not a specific idea, if, when, and how to pivot, and why speed is your only advantage
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
00:00 - You really don't know what the market wants
01:24 - Why build for an idea space, not a specific idea
03:28 - Waking up and realizing you don't care about your customers
06:32 - The 8 pivots that led to Mintlify
10:24 - Figstack: 5,000 users on day one, then complete failure
13:55 - Pivoting 3 days before the YC interview
17:26 - Retention is everything - virality means nothing
26:45 - Building Mintlify over a weekend out of desperation
31:33 - When you're embarrassed to use your own product
34:07 - Ship fast or die - the real MVP mindset
36:51 - How to know when to pivot vs persist
40:00 - 14 months of chewing glass before success
45:36 - How to recognize product-market fit in one week
49:05 - Launching without an edit button and still closing sales
53:04 - Why falling in love with ideas kills startups
55:07 - Throw 100 darts fast vs calculating 2 perfect throws
Creators and Guests
Host
Pascal Unger
Co-founder / Managing Partner at focal.vc We lead pre-seeds in North America with up to $1M: We exclusively back AI native software startups at the very start. Thereafter, we help them get off the ground better and faster, supported by a network > 200 GTM executives. That's our singular, unwavering focus.
What is focal podcast?
Pivotal early lessons of today's best startups.
Welcome to the focal podcast where we go deep with some of today's best founders and operators on ONE crucial lessons from their early days.
This podcast is not the usual "highlight reel" startup podcast that goes one inch deep across 20+ topics. Rather, we ask the questions you’d ask if you were sitting across from them. No fluff, just the real, actionable insights you’d get if these founders were mentoring you 1on1.
We cover topics including:
- What worked and why.
- Costly mistakes and how they fixed them.
- Frameworks that truly made a difference.
- Tactics to move faster.
- What they wish they’d known sooner.
- And much more!
"Only a fool learns from their own mistakes. The wise learn from the mistakes of others."