JustDecide Startup Dilemma Of The Week: When To Pivot

Every week we team up with New York startup Justdecide.com to bring you the Startup Dilemma Of The Week. In this feature we take dilemmas that real startups are facing and put them to the crowd using the justdecide platform to crowdsource advice for that startup.

This week’s dilemma is one that comes about naturally to startups everywhere. It can also be one of the most uncomfortable events a startup has to go through. Our startup dilemma of the week this week is “When to pivot”.

The startup that submitted this dilemma has been slowly, but steadily gaining users with their startup but they’re finding that users aren’t actively using their service. The user count goes up, and the clock ticks. A pivot is inevitable but the question that then comes in to play is when.

Pivots happen all the time, they happen in accelerators, before startups go live, in beta, in alpha, even after a startup has been established for a year or two. Facing the pivot is one of the hardest things cofounders go through. Many don’t want to abandon their original idea. Others know it’s the right thing to do but are scared about when to actually do it.

One of the biggest concerns when pivoting is will the startup lose their current user base while pivoting. Sure in the pivot you’re hopeful that you’ll gain more users but it’s scary as hell.

This week’s startup dilemma of the week offers three options:

Pivot Now

Wait a few months and make a decision

Don’t pivot for the foreseeable future.

What would you do? You can weigh in here.

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submit your own, email startups@nibletz.com

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To Ship Or Not To Ship, That’s This Weeks Just Decide Startup Dilemma Of The Week

As you may already know nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else” has partnered with New York startup JustDecide for the Startup Dilemma Of The Week. In this feature we use a dilemma that a startup from “everywhere else” has faced in the startup process. We then take that dilemma and crowdsource advice for the startup sing the JustDecide platform at JustDecide.com

This week’s Startup Dilemma Of The Week, is a dilemma that many startups face. It has to do with, when do you launch. It was brought to us by Columbus startup Resition which we featured earlier this week. Resition is a web based platform that helps displaced (laid off) workers transition to new positions.

As the startups co-founder, Mike Chapman, has explained; Resition was functionally ready to go. It is also a much needed platform. There is a direct problem, and a growing problem, that Resition handles for displaced workers. The platform runs smoothly but the design is a little rough around the edges and the feature set that Chapman hoped to roll out is still growing.

Startups across the country and around the world face this very problem every day; ” To Ship, or Not To Ship”. With statistics about startups working against all of us, the decision on when to ship your final, consumer facing product, can prove vital to a startups success. You don’t want to leave an “alpha” or a “beta” tag up too long or people grow doubtful that you will ever finish your product.

You also don’t want to pull the trigger to early. An incomplete design or a feature flaw can make a user go away and never come back.

Conversely, pitching your startup to people, crowds and investors can be exhilarating. When an entrepreneur comes up with an idea for a startup and then gets a team to buy into that idea, the internal clock starts ticking immediately. When can I get the product out.

Head on over to the Startup Dilemma Of The Week feature at justdecide.com here and help weigh in on the decision making process. Remember for the purpose of this great educational feature for startups, you need to go here to comment and weigh in. It only takes a minute and you may need the same community help one day and it’s free.

If you have a startup dilemma of the week send it to startups@nibletz.com and we’ll get in touch with you about featuring your dilemma.

JustDecide.com founder Jay Amato is working to perfect justdecide.com and they recently launched this survey, when you have a second weigh in on that as well.

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Check out previous startup dilemmas of the week here

Check out the justdecide.com survey information here

Are you a startup “everywhere else” then you need to be here

New York Startup: JustDecide.com Needs Your Help Real Quick

Justdecide.com is a truly unique new startup born in Brooklyn New York. The startup headed by long time executive and change agent Jay Amato, is all about helping make decisions and crowd source answers. In fact we team up with JustDecide.com for a regular feature called the Startup Dilemma Of The Week.

Amato and the team at JustDecide are conducting an important, but quick survey, on internet users habits and the way they seek advice and make decisions about their career and their business.

Are your decisions influenced by friends, family members, social networks, colleagues? The series of easy to understand questions will help the JustDecide team to decide which of the many features for their platform they’re going to implement next.

Currently the justdecide.com platform has helped people with a variety of decisions, some easy, some not so much. In our feature, the Startup Dilemma Of The Week, we take a look at issues written in by various startups, that pertain to the way they are setting up their startup, or things that have happened along the way.

Justdecide.com can be about business, relationships, child raising, cooking, heck even one guy is asking advice on cable tv vs a set top box. Another dilemma this week deals with the dilemma on whether the user should pony up full price for the next iPhone or wait for an upgrade.

Any dilemma you’re facing with multiple, clearly defined possible answers will fit in the justdecide.com platform perfectly.

While JustDecide.com is great right now, Amato is looking to make it better and for that he’s turned to the startup community so please take a gander at this quick survey.

JustDecide Quick Survey

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Check out justdecide.com here

Here are some of our Startup Dilemmas Of The Week

Are you going “everywhere else” click here

Just Decide Startup Dilemma Of The Week: Should I Fire My Outsourced Developer?

If you haven’t been keeping up with the JustDecide.com/Nibletz startup dilemma of the week, you should be. This valuable feature from both justdecide.com and Nibletz, provides insight into issues that a lot of startups are facing. In addition to checking out this week’s Justdecide.com/Niblets startup dilemma of the week, you can also submit your own dilemma for consideration at startups@nibletz.com. Now you can crowdsource your problems and dilemmas that could be quite costly for the average founder.

This week’s startup dilemma of the week is undoubtedly something that hundreds, if not thousands of startups have faced.

“Should I fire my outsourced developers”. The situation is this, a startup has outsourced their development work. They went through elance.com which typically has a good developer base. However the project is taking a lot longer than expected and it’s costing a lot more as it drags on.

While everyone wants to believe the best in people, when startups are faced with this exact issue you can’t help but wonder if the outsourced developer is just trying to milk you for more non-existent funds or if they’re really having a hard time with the concept and project you gave them. Either way, your marketing is in place and you’ve been grilling your team for months to make sure they’re ready for even the most alpha-ist of beta launches.

Without the work of the outsourced developer you have no product to sell. In some cases the outsourced developer may think that they have you between a rock and a hard place. Because they do.

The Details:I outsourced the web development work for my startup and it is taking longer than expected and getting more expensive. I had a great idea for a social gaming startup, but couldn’t find a technical co-founder. I decided to raise some FFF money (family, friends and fools), and found someone through elance to build my gaming app. The developer said that it was going to be more complicated than he originally thought and it has been over the 6 months timetable he originally gave me. He is charging me for the hours that he is still working on it, and I don’t know if I am getting ripped off, or if the development work was more complicated than I thought.

What do you think this startup should do?

Continue on to justdecide.com and weigh in on this week’s startup dilemma of the week.

Should I Fire My Co-Founder? The Startup Dilemma Of The Week Powered By JustDecide.com

This was a community submitted startup dilemma of the week. However, as you can imagine from the headline, this startup wants to remain anonymous. You can submit your startup dilemma of the week to startups@nibletz.com and we’ll put it on our startup dilemma of the week segment with justdecide.com. Also the names have been changed to go with the anonymity.

John and David were best friends since the 8th grade. The two of them were for the most part inseparable as kids. They went to the same high school and then onto the same college. In fact they married two girls that were best friends as well. As kids in middle school, high school and then college the two of them had several business ideas, some even amounted to schemes to make money. They were able to find little “lemonade stand” businesses that helped them get through college.

Everything was going great in their lives. Then, a year after the two married their girlfriends (who were also best friends), John and a friend of his from computer science classes at their college came up with a great idea for a startup. It’s a new web platform/mobile app startup that has little competition. In fact it’s a great idea.

David was never very technical he was always the “money” guy and the guy with the schemes that helped them get through college. As John’s best friend though, he made what some might consider a fatal startup mistake and told him he could be a co-founder. David would be the “biz dev” guy.

They both liked the idea but because of his day job, new interests and new married life, and because he didn’t entirely understand the concept, David didn’t contribute much to the startup. While John and the other co-founder put up $20,000 of their own money raised from their parents and relatives, David only put in $5,000.

Now John senses something needs to be done.

The startup is about ready to go to market but they made another fatal error that may work in John’s favor. They havent yet formalized their company, nor have they done a true operating agreement. John and the other co-founder, we can call him Chip, are ready to move forward and roll out the product without David as a co-founder, or an employee.

John and Chip are concerned that if they make the move to get rid of David he will sabotage their work. He may actually sabotage the product itself or damage their reputations through social media. David was always a little more popular than John and has a sizable social media presence.

Now, John and Chip are stuck. They admittedly haven’t pulled the trigger to get rid of David out of fear. It seems like the most logical step to take.

John is of course worried about his friendship with David and the fact that the two wives are best friends as well. Aside from the obvious missteps they’ve taken along the way, what should they do?

You can weigh in at the startup dilemma of the week here. John and Chip need our help!

JustDecide.com Startup Dilemma Of The Week #2 Should I Quit My Day Job

Startups, the Justdecide.com dilemma of the week is a feature here at nibletz.com where you can participate in an active discussion with other like-minded startups and founders to help a fellow startup with a dilemma. You can also submit your own dilemma to startups@nibletz.com if you’re having trouble making a decision about your startup you can crowdsource our community via justdecide.com

That’s exactly what Atlanta-based entrepreneur Aaron Gray did. Gray is the founder of the Legacy Movement, with a goal of becoming the go-to site for deals and to change the discussion about entrepreneurship and founding especially in regards to under-served communities of entrepreneurs and founders within the startup ecosystem. To that end Gray is trying to help all entrepreneurs and founders with an emphasis on black-owned, women-owned and latino-owned startups.

Gray has a dilemma though, and it stems from his strategy to build his user base and community base before focusing on funding. For Gray this is actually a great strategy, if he can build scale for his startup then it becomes more valuable in the eyes of the potential investor. Naturally with more funding he can do more for both aspects of his startup, the Legacy Movement.

Gray is still working a full-time job, which he needs to “pay the bills”. He knows at some point he’s going to need to leave his day job so that he can focus on his efforts with his startup. He’s come to the startup community to gauge their feedback and help him solve this dilemma.

His options include:

Continuing to work full-time while working on his startup in his spare time.

Negotiate a part-time agreement with his current employer

Leave his job

Raise an angel round of funding to subsidize his switch from full-time employment to full-time founder.

You can find out more about Gray’s back story here.

Each week we will present to you a startup dilemma of the week with our partner justdecide.com We would love it if you could take just a few minutes out of your day to weigh in on the discussion. The “Startup Dilemma Of The Week” is a free resource to any startup everywhere else, and you may need it some day.

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JustDecide & Nibletz Present The Startup Dilemma Of The Week

Justdecide.com and nibletz.com are partnering for something very exciting, thought provoking and hopefully helpful to startups everywhere.

Jay Amato, the founder of justdecide.com has a long standing background helping to build and rebuild fortune 500 companies in New York. After a great career of doing just that, he found that he had a dilemma, what to do next. That’s where justdecide was born out of Amato’s own dilemma.

While many people turn to Amato for his advice in business and mentorship he’s also jumped head first into Justdecide, his own startup. That’s where the idea for the “Startup Dilemma Of The Week” was born.

There’s no real “if” about it, along the startup path you’re going to come into a dilemma, or two or ten and need some help. Now every week you can submit your dilemma to startups@nibletz.com and if you’re lucky we will post it as our dilemma of the week.

All week long you’ll be able to see your dilemma on justdecide.com at this link or by clicking the banner to the right side of the page here on nibletz.com.

We will encourage our community of startups “everywhere else” do help solve your dilemma by choosing one of the three possible answers and weighing in with feedback. Hopefully you’ll come to some resolution with the help of the startup community. Also we will randomly select people who weigh in on the dilemma for cool prizes from some of our great sponsors.

Our kick off dilemma actually comes from a crowded discussion at dinner during TechWeek in Chicago. There were actually about 10 of us around the table discussing one founder’s dilemma.

“I’ve finished my pitch deck, what should I do next”. The discussion got heated because everyone at the table had a different point of view, mostly predicated on where they were in the startup process.

The person who asked the question was ready to go head first and pitch venture capitalists, in Chicago and all over the country, and of course the valley too.

One of the participants in the discussion thought that the idea hadn’t been vetted out enough. The entrepreneur was still green and wet behind the ears. Other participant thought at this early stage in the game the entrepreneur would be chewed up and spit out by any venture capitalist and perhaps blow his chance at ever getting in front of that VC again.

We all seemed to be in agreement on that. If the entrepreneur took his idea to a VC this early in the game he would blow his one and only shot. Of course we could all understand why he wanted to just go pitching away, like many of us, he needed the money.

Another one of the participants in the discussion suggested that the entrepreneur vet the idea and practice the pitch with friends and family. Of course the downside to this is that more often than not his friends and family are going to blow smoke up his ass.

One person suggested he just randomly talk about the idea with 50 complete strangers in Chicago and see what they thought.

Please click over here to justdecide.com to weigh in on the “Startup Dilemma of the Week”. Also don’t forget to send us your dilemmas so that the startup community can help you out with your important startup dilemmas.

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NY Startup: JustDecide Helps You Make Decisions INTERVIEW

Have you ever wanted someone to help you make a decision. Maybe you didn’t feel like talking to a friend or relative about your decision. Maybe you didn’t want to call the advice call in show? Well now there’s a startup for that, and it’s called JustDecide.

If you’ve ever struggled with a decision (and who hasn’t) than you know the foundation for JustDecide. With this innovative new startup from New York, you get real life people who have had to make the same decisions as you, help you make informative, good decisions. Heck, this startup is life changing.

Jay Amato, a New York executive with quite an impressive resume, launched JustDecide just over a week ago as a platform for social decision making. Amato goes over his resume in our interview with him below. He founded JustDecide when he was faced with the dilemma of making the decision on what to do next.

We talk with Amato about JustDecide, decision making and the New York startup scene. Since TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012 we’ve heard different views on whether New York’s startup scene is actually more segregated than it’s west coast counterpart.

Check out the interview below. Based on his life experiences, and lengthy executive work history Amato provides a different perspective on a lot of things in the startup process.