Plotting Before Pivoting
Research the opportunity, reverse-engineer winners, and define your terms before building
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- 96%
Plotting Before Pivoting turns career downtime into a structured discovery period. Begin with the intersection of what you can do, what you enjoy, what people want, and what they will buy. Then locate businesses that have already demonstrated demand and reverse-engineer their models, teams, economics, and outcomes. Contact not only founders but early employees, investors, bankers, and acquirers who can reveal how the category works. Capture the findings in a research document and use them to test product-market fit before formalizing the venture. Finally, decide whether a partner is necessary and define the effort, capital, lifestyle sacrifices, and boundaries you will accept. The output is not certainty; it is a researched opportunity with explicit terms and fewer hidden assumptions.
Origin
Sam Parr described using this process while developing Hampton after selling The Hustle, including researching comparable companies and interviewing roughly 50 relevant people. Extracted from The Jasmine Star Show.
Core principles
- 01Treat downtime as deliberate research time
- 02Find the overlap between ability, enjoyment, demand, and payment
- 03Study proven businesses before designing your own
- 04Learn directly from the people who built, operated, and acquired comparable companies
- 05Set the price you will and will not pay before committing
How to run it
- 1
Find the opportunity intersection
List your useful skills, activities you enjoy, needs the market has, and outcomes customers will fund. Explore ideas near the intersection rather than choosing solely from passion or market size.
Pro tip Include weaknesses that constrain the type or scale of company you should operate.
Watch out A passion that nobody will pay for may remain a hobby rather than a business.
- 2
Identify proven analogues
Find businesses that serve similar needs, including companies that have scaled, sold, or failed. Use their existence as evidence that the category is possible, not proof that your specific idea will work.
Pro tip Study adjacent models as well as direct competitors.
Watch out Do not copy a surface-level model without understanding its economics and operating requirements.
- 3
Map the people who know the system
Identify founders, executives, early hires, investors, bankers, and acquirers connected to those businesses. Prioritize people who saw the company at different stages.
Pro tip Early employees often reveal operational details that public founder stories omit.
Watch out Keep outreach respectful and use lawful, proportionate contact research.
- 4
Interview and reverse-engineer
Ask how the category works, where value is created, what customers buy, and what commonly fails. Organize the evidence in a living research document.
Pro tip Offer reciprocity and accept a refusal without hostility.
Watch out Do not mistake one influential person's opinion for market consensus.
- 5
Test product-market fit
Use the research to form and test assumptions about the customer, offer, price, and delivery model. Look for evidence of willingness to pay before fully formalizing the business.
Pro tip Use simple applications, interviews, or manual pilots before building extensive infrastructure.
Watch out Interest and compliments are weaker evidence than commitment or payment.
- 6
Choose the building structure
Decide whether to proceed alone or recruit a partner whose strengths complement your weaknesses. Establish alignment before making the relationship difficult to unwind.
Pro tip Choose companionship deliberately if isolation would reduce your motivation or judgment.
Watch out Convenience alone is a poor basis for choosing a co-founder.
- 7
Set the terms and price
Write down how hard you will work, how much capital you will risk, and which lifestyle costs you will accept. Define the prices you refuse to pay as clearly as those you accept.
Pro tip Review the terms with affected life and business partners.
Watch out An attractive goal can become destructive when its unspoken cost conflicts with your values.
In the wild
Parr explored a peer-community opportunity, identified a comparable business acquired for billions, contacted the acquiring side, and repeated the research across roughly 50 people. He also studied fit with his skills and recruited Joe Speiser, whose operational strengths complemented his own.
→ The research clarified the market, operating model, partnership, and terms for launching Hampton.
Common mistakes
Announcing before investigating
Publicly committing to an under-researched concept creates avoidable reputation pressure and may lock the founder into weak assumptions.
Interviewing only famous founders
Founders provide one perspective; early hires, investors, acquirers, and operators expose different parts of the mechanism.
Ignoring the price of success
A goal can appear aligned until partners discover that they disagree about the required work, capital, control, or lifestyle sacrifice.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for founders and professionals exploring their next venture without yet knowing its exact form.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when an urgent crisis requires an immediate operational decision rather than extended exploration.
From the transcript
“I call it plotting. I don't call it pivoting , I call it plotting or scheming.”
“I don't exactly know what it is, but I'm gonna research and plot.”
“And then I say, here's the price I'm not gonna pay.”
From the episode
The Framework You Need When You Pivot with Sam Parr
Sam Parr