We followed YC book on interviewing people, operating a service, then building product. But, we are finding out (painfully) that people don't want to pay for our SaaS. There is just not enough demand. Since you can't sit idle to make money we have spent 8 months to build two small products. We dont have integrations yet but we have core tech that works well. We have single digit customers but we are not growing at all. We had zero sales for last 3 months. The month before that were not good as we had only one or two purchases.
We want to pivot. All founders agree that pivoting makes sense. But, there is a great dilemma
1) Should we use our tech built so far and find new ICP or Industry who could benefit from this?
This will be best outcome as the code, system, branding wont become throwaway. It take HELL LOT OF TIME to do branding and earn trust. Throwing it out will be starting from zero again.
Or
2) We should let our tech and systems go and pivot to new industry and build again?
We have adjacent industries in mind. We haven't done customer discovery yet in this area and this will be our next step. We won't build until we validate the demand. While we may have to throw away the tech and systems, we will be looking to solve problem with fresh eyes. No baggage and no carryover of thinking patterns.
How to choose between two? What do you suggest?