What a Pre-PMF Startup Should Look Like

In June 2020, the author's company decided to pivot due to slow revenue growth. They spent six weeks exploring different solutions and identified several lessons that helped them build an open-source data integration platform. The key points of their exploration process include: working on two ideas at a time, focusing on problems to solve rather than solutions, using a common template for evaluating ideas, seeking indicators of potential product-market fit, starting prototyping after enough validation, and reacting during stalemates by revisiting old ideas. The company eventually built an open-source data integration engine called OSS ELT, which addresses the needs of companies that require full control over their data privacy through a self-hosted solution.