Why Betting on an Idea Space Beats a Single Idea | Why 5,000 Signups Mean Nothing Without Retention | How to Know When to Pivot vs Persist | How to Survive 14 Months of Failure | Why Instincts Beat Market Research | Han Wang, Co-founder & CEO of Mintlify
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.