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4: The Pivot Path: Finding Direction Through Customer Conversations

In Episode 4 of TinySeed Tales, we rejoin Colleen Schnettler after a period of significant upheaval. Since her last appearance, she's nearly broken up with her business partner, completely pivoted her company, and even changed its name to Hello Query. Through these challenges, one thing has anchored her decision-making: consistent, focused customer interviews.

The Pivot to Embedded Analytics

Colleen's initial vision was a standalone reporting tool for internal teams. But after speaking with potential customers, she discovered a more compelling opportunity: an embeddable solution that SaaS companies can integrate into their products.

"What we learned was there's even higher value for our customers' customers to get their data. Our customers' customers need to build their own reports."

This pivot solves a real pain point. Many SaaS companies face constant requests for custom reports from their users, but building comprehensive reporting features isn't their core focus.

"Those are the kinds of people we've been talking to—'my customers want their data out, they want it in Excel, they're going to put it in a Power BI or they like Excel where they live'—and building out reporting and filtering and custom export CSVs and scheduling is not core to our product. We don't really care, but we've got to give them this feature, and by the way, we can upcharge them for this feature, and I love that because now we're closer to the money."

Learning to Listen: The Art of Customer Interviews

For solo founders, customer interviews are essential but tricky. Colleen admits she had to learn how to conduct these effectively:

"I am naturally a pretty social person, so I just thought I would be magically good at customer interviews and no, I'm really not magically good at them... When I first started doing them, I heard everyone say yes because I'm just naturally energetic and enthusiastic and optimistic. I was projecting my, 'oh my gosh, you love this,' and they were like, 'yeah, I guess so.'"

After conducting over 20 interviews, she's developed a better approach:

"When I get on a call with someone and I say, 'how are you solving this problem now'—if they haven't even tried to solve it, it's not a big problem."

This simple test helps her quickly identify whether she's addressing a genuine pain point or merely a minor inconvenience.

The Technical Silver Lining

Despite the dramatic pivot, not everything required starting from scratch. Colleen's team has leveraged much of their existing codebase:

"We had a large part of the code already exists because we are using our old product in the new product."

For bootstrapped founders, this ability to repurpose existing work rather than completely starting over is crucial. As Rob notes, "That's nice. This is where it is a pivot. Sometimes people will say, I was going to build project management for hair salons and now I'm going to pivot into building a mobile app on Facebook. And it's like, that's not a pivot. That's just a completely different thing."

The Confidence-Gut Balance

When Rob asks about her confidence level in this new direction, Colleen shares an insight many founders will recognize:

"I feel like this is 50% confidence, 50% gut, because literally from the beginning, Rob, this is what I have wanted to build."

This balance between data-driven decisions and founder intuition is something many solo entrepreneurs struggle with. While customer validation is crucial, sometimes your gut feeling about the market still plays an important role.

Finding the Right First Customers

Colleen has identified 3-4 "founding customers" to work with on her initial version, but finding them wasn't easy:

"Right now, our social networks are still our number one source of traffic. Some of these people came in through cold LinkedIn outreach... I had a much better success rate with people coming in from Twitter because it's kind of like a warm intro."

She acknowledges what many founders struggle with: "The customer thing is really hard."

The Quality-Speed Tension

As Colleen prepares to get Hello Query into customers' hands, she faces a common founder dilemma:

"I am most looking forward to getting this into customer's hands because these interviews, Rob, I mean, we are in this position now where it feels like momentum. It feels like it's going to work."

But that excitement comes with anxiety:

"I'm super excited to get in front of people, but I'm also very nervous that if we do it too early, we will erode trust and lose those potential customers."

This tension is especially acute for Hello Query, as their product will be embedded in their customers' production software and visible to their users.

Key Takeaways for Solo Founders

Focus your customer interviews: Ask pointed questions that reveal whether a problem is actually painful enough to solve.

Be wary of your own bias: Enthusiasm can lead to misinterpreting lukewarm interest as validation.

Look for competitors as validation: Unlike her first idea which had no competition, Hello Query has established competitors—a positive signal that a market exists.

Reuse what you can: A pivot doesn't mean throwing everything away. Look for ways to leverage existing work.

Target customers who already feel the pain: If prospects haven't tried to solve the problem themselves, they likely won't pay you to solve it.

Balance speed with quality: Especially for embedded solutions, reliability and polish matter from day one.

Colleen's journey in Episode 4 illustrates the messy reality of finding product-market fit. By staying flexible, continuously validating with customers, and focusing on genuine pain points, she's finding a path forward that feels increasingly promising—both by the data and by her gut.

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