“I would back into that by thinking a little bit about retention… well what problem does it solve? The learning with Wrangle ultimately was it didn't solve a real problem… when we pivoted into the burner standalone app we were testing it by selling tickets on Craigslist and it quickly validated the problem.”

Use Retention to Tell Product Problem from Distribution Problem

Greg's framework for deciding whether to pivot: if people keep coming back (retention), it's a distribution problem you can solve. If they don't, it's a product problem no amount of marketing can fix. Testing Burner via fake Craigslist ads generated immediate, authentic demand — proof the problem was real, not created.