i've been working on a startup for the past 24 months with my cofounder - i'm technical and she's mostly focused on business side (with basic frontend skills). we got funded roughly 18 months ago for an idea i came up with, was excited about, and found some traction.
since then we pivoted away from it. we've roughly pivoted almost every month to something new. there is no longer any vision or clear problem we're trying to solve. each month is our team simply fishing for ideas in different industries and domains hoping to strike gold.
my cofounder and i don't see eye to eye on most things anymore and the relationship has also deteriorated significantly. my cofounder and i disagree upon what problems to focus on. for her, ideas only resonate if there are competitors who've raised $X million or hit certain revenue targets with no regard for interest or insights for a problem/industry. i'd much rather work on problems where i have some inherent interest and/or urge to solve the problem but it's hard to drive a shared vision between us both. this is a constant point of friction.
after 24 months of working together, i'm now considering quitting my own startup to either go do another one or take a job where i can find problems and a future cofounder. has anyone been through anything similar in the past? how did you navigate this?
Have a frank and open discussion about things. That may clear the air and right the relationship.
As for pivoting ….. Steve Blank says, "A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."
So yes you need to be trying to find what works. Maybe try to decide together what you work on and for how long. But you do need to be actively searching.
Pivoting before you raise is great. Pivoting after you raise is less great; if you're effectively starting from scratch (for a definition of "scratch" that includes "everything you could do if you just walked away and started a new company with a clean cap table"), it's costing you to be doing that with investors already signed on.
Nevertheless, without a repeatable business model, your task is still to search till you find one.
You are correct though, the money should come after it’s found.
He did say he had early traction I wonder what happened to that.
we pivoted away from it for fairly dumb reasons ngl. my cofounder didn't segment ICP whatsoever and then got mixed signals from the market and eventually decided there wasn't a need. in hindsight, there was demand we just botched it. this is my first year doing startups and it's my fault not learning enough startup basics when we got started.