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8: The Last Pivot: Setting Kill Criteria When the Boulder Won't Budge

In Episode 8 of TinySeed Tales, we find Colleen Schnettler at a critical juncture. With only three months of runway remaining, she's making one final pivot while confronting a difficult question that haunts many founders: When is it time to walk away?

The Marketing Data Maze: A Crowded Path

After shifting focus away from engineering managers, Colleen targeted marketing data analysts through cold LinkedIn outreach, newsletters, and direct conversations. The results were disheartening:

"I had honestly, kind of an abysmal response rate from my cold LinkedIn outreach. I don't know if that's because marketers are just overwhelmed with choice, but it wasn't great."

Her conversations revealed marketers were drowning in data from various sources but rarely leveraged their primary database—HellQuery's intended sweet spot. Colleen considered building a data aggregator to integrate with tools like BigQuery or Segment, but quickly recognized the challenges:

"Maintaining those integrations can be really, really painful... I would totally build that if I thought it would work, but I don't have any kind of unique take on it."

Without deep marketing expertise, Colleen struggled to identify a competitive edge in this crowded landscape. She briefly explored addressing marketers' universal frustration with Google Analytics 4, but again concluded she wasn't positioned to offer a compelling alternative.

The Ghost Stories: When Interest Vanishes

Undeterred, Colleen pivoted to targeting product people, who initially showed promising enthusiasm:

"The product people all wanted to talk to me. I got on so many calls and Rob, there were several people that I was sure—100% sure—they were going to sign up and try it out. And I just got ghosted so hard by these people so hard."

This painful experience highlights a universal challenge for founders: distinguishing between genuine demand and fleeting interest. Despite positive conversations, Colleen couldn't convert initial excitement into actual customers—a telling sign that product-market fit remained elusive.

Back to Basics: A Simplified Approach

Amid these setbacks, Colleen found a promising lead—a customer interested in a product that lets users pull their own data. This concept, which she'd previously shelved, suddenly seemed viable with her existing technology:

"The product is totally different, but the job to be done is the same, and we couldn't make that first product really work the way we want it to, but this feels very doable with the tech that I already have."

This pivot yielded tangible progress: two customers paying $60/month each, with one poised to upgrade to $150/month once she implements SSO and embedded features. At a projected $210 MRR, it's modest but encouraging—representing Colleen's first real traction after months of struggle.

Drawing the Line: Kill Criteria in Action

With her runway ending in December, Colleen establishes clear "kill criteria"—specific metrics she must achieve by year-end or she'll walk away:

"I don't want a side project that goes on for five years making no money or little bit of money. Oh, it's making $200 a month. I should keep it up. No, I'm here to go big or go home. I'm kind of an intense person. I am all in."

This clarity provides both direction and protection—a framework to avoid the trap of endless pivoting with minimal progress. As Rob Walling notes, Colleen's approach aligns with Annie Duke's concept from the book Quit: setting a date and measurable milestone that signals when it's time to move on.

The Emotional Weight of the Pre-PMF Desert

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Colleen's story is her raw honesty about the emotional toll of entrepreneurship when product-market fit remains elusive:

"Everyone who has found product-market fit says you will know when you are building something people want, you will know. So I can tell you right now for sure, that is not happening to me. I am not building something people want. I am cold calling and trying to get people onboarded, and it's like just pushing this boulder up the hill."

Despite the setbacks, her passion persists:

"This whole season of this podcast shows a really real journey, and unfortunately it just hasn't gone the way I thought it would... but I don't want to do anything else."

Rob provides context for why this stage is so mentally taxing:

"This is the hardest part mentally, I think because you just don't know and no one can tell you... You're making a lot of hard decisions with incomplete information. A ton of noise."

As Colleen prepares for a high-stakes demo with a larger prospective client, her story captures the precarious balance between persistence and pragmatism that defines the entrepreneurial journey.

Key Takeaways for Solo Founders

Set clear kill criteria: Define specific metrics and deadlines to objectively evaluate whether to continue or quit. This prevents endless grinding on a misfit idea.

Recognize the absence of product-market fit: If you're constantly "pushing a boulder uphill" to get customers, you haven't found it yet. True PMF creates a pull rather than requiring constant push.

Be wary of crowded markets without domain expertise: Without deep industry knowledge or a clear differentiator, breaking into competitive spaces is extraordinarily difficult.

Don't mistake interest for commitment: Enthusiasm in calls doesn't translate to usage or payment—focus on actual conversions, not promising conversations.

Focus on leveraging your technical strengths: Colleen's potential breakthrough came when finding a direction that utilized technology she had already built rather than entering unfamiliar territory.

Accept the "messy middle": The pre-product-market fit stage is inherently fuzzy, with frameworks that are loose and less prescriptive compared to later stages.

Balance emotion with strategy: Maintain passion while setting boundaries—Colleen's story shows how to remain determined without becoming delusional.

Notable Quotes

"I am not building something people want. I am cold calling and trying to get people onboarded, and it's like just pushing this boulder up the hill." — Colleen Schnettler, candidly assessing her product-market fit situation

"I don't want a side project that goes on for five years making no money... I'm here to go big or go home. I'm kind of an intense person. I am all in." — Colleen Schnettler, explaining her decision to set a December deadline

"This is the hardest part mentally, I think because you just don't know and no one can tell you... you're just searching." — Rob Walling, on the inherent challenges of the pre-product-market fit stage

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