Doppel shut down its original API for detecting fake NFTs after realizing it had only one real customer and other prospects weren't willing to pay much. This decisive action, based on clear market feedback, freed them up to focus on their more promising pivot to cybersecurity.
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Doppel initially sold to trust & safety and legal teams. However, they realized cybersecurity teams were the "power users" who derived the most value, evangelized the product, and were willing to spend more. This insight drove their successful pivot to the cybersecurity market.
If you build a product for a problem that only one customer has, don't just abandon it. Offer to turn it into a high-priced, bespoke solution for that single customer. This salvages the work and creates a profitable revenue stream, avoiding a total loss.
Founders who've built a product but aren't seeing traction should stop focusing on the product. Instead, they must leverage their market knowledge to find the real customer demand, even if it means scrapping prior work. This pivot can unlock massive growth, as seen with a startup that went 0 to $34M ARR.
When a startup finally uncovers true customer demand, their existing product, built on assumptions, is often the wrong shape. The most common pattern is for these startups to burn down their initial codebase and rebuild from scratch to perfectly fit the newly discovered demand.
Despite reaching seven figures in revenue, Doppel's founders pivoted from serving NFT marketplaces. They recognized the market's trajectory was poor and their ambition to "serve the whole world" required a shift to a larger, more sustainable market like cybersecurity.
Doppel's founder argues PMF must be re-established with every pivot, platform expansion, or new market entry. For modern SaaS companies building platforms, founders must earn PMF for each new product they ship, treating it as a constant, iterative process.
Eve discovered the true product-market fit for their old product only when they announced its shutdown. The most passionate customers protested vehemently, revealing the product's actual value and core user base, a high-stakes but effective test.
Deciding which products or services to cut can be an emotional process for founders. Amy Porterfield advises removing the "drama" by relying on data. By tracking metrics for each offer, she could make objective decisions to retire those that didn't make business sense, simplifying her path to growth.
Many founders become too attached to what they've built. The ability to unemotionally kill products that aren't working—even core parts of the business—is a superpower. This prevents wasting resources and allows for the rapid pivots necessary to find true product-market fit.
Palta shut down 'Weatherwell,' an app with strong product-market fit and high retention. The decision was purely strategic: its addressable market, though dedicated, was too narrow to support their goal of building $100M+ revenue businesses, demonstrating ruthless focus on scale potential.
