Pivot Accelerator Five Interviews In, and a Big Shift in How I Think
This week has been intense in the best possible way.
For the Pivot Accelerator, I had class on Monday, class on Thursday, office hours on Saturday, and eight interviews scheduled across the weekend. By the time I walk into tomorrow's class, I'll have completed all five interviews required for the assignment—and then some.
One of the biggest wins this week wasn't just the interviews. It was finally feeling confident enough to put my slides in front of real people. After meeting with mentor Brian and getting feedback during office hours, I felt ready to test my ideas instead of endlessly tweaking them.
The interviews have been fascinating. Not just because of what people are saying, but because of what I'm learning about the research process itself.
A few days ago, I printed more than 150 pages of interview transcripts from research I conducted last year and went through them by hand. Highlighter. Pen. Notes in the margins. Looking for themes, quotes, emotions, and patterns.
What surprised me most was how much I noticed that AI didn't.
For a long time, I would upload transcripts and let AI summarize the findings. It was fast. Efficient. Easy.
But my mentor challenged me on something important: I was delegating my thinking.
That hit hard.
This week has been a reminder that AI can support thinking, but it shouldn't replace it. The real insights came from sitting with the data myself, noticing the nuances, and making sense of it through my own lens first.
Tomorrow's class is focused on reviewing interview findings, identifying moments of "heat" or strong emotion, and deciding whether to pivot or persevere. As it turns out, I misunderstood the assignment and completed five interviews when they only expected one or two before this session.
I'm not mad about it.
Now I have a deeper pool of data, stronger confidence in what I'm hearing, and plenty to bring into the discussion.
One unexpected lesson came from interviewing a friend who had purchased a toddler tantrum kit from someone else. I'll be honest—that one brought up some feelings.
Why didn't they come to me?
The answer could be a hundred different things. Maybe I didn't have the exact offer they needed. Maybe they didn't know I offered something similar. Maybe they simply found another solution first.
I don't actually know.
But moments like that reveal where our assumptions live, and that's valuable information too.
That's what this whole process is teaching me: customer discovery isn't just about learning about your customers. It's also about learning about yourself, your business, your blind spots, and your opportunities.
Tomorrow is Class 3. Another interview. A board meeting. More learning.
And honestly?
I'm loving every minute of it.
The support, the mentors, the community, the repetition of the lessons until they finally click—it's exactly what I needed.
For now, I'm off to review interview recordings and look for the moments that made people lean in, light up, or get emotional.
That's where the real clues are.
Have a calm, colorful day.
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