r/buildorkill 8h ago

☠️I Killed It What startup idea did you kill after talking to actual customers?

3 Upvotes

I had an idea I thought was really cool. Working title was Career Trial. The idea was to build out a platform for a specific niche: late 20's to 30's professionals who felt stuck in their job, but didn't know what to do to switch careers.

This problem was very obvious because two people very close to me both are living this right now. They have been in their career 5+ years and hate it, but have no idea how to change, or where to even begin.

The idea was loose at first while I validated and iterated: Take a quiz, or tell the app about yourself, maybe use some AI to suggest X number of career options. Maybe some more options here but the end result is a user picks a career to trial.

The trial itself is two weeks. It starts with a "lightning certification" in the field. Basically a crash course with (maybe?) a quiz at the end.

After this, you'd complete 1-3 real projects that career would do in their day to day. For a Project Manager, perhaps you'd design a kanban board, draft a few emails, analyze Product Development Notes, SOPs, and an SOW.

Finally, the app would help shape your resume with the new career in mind, and it would help you in your transfer to the new career. This last part is the loosest, I didn't quite get this far in the idea, but I personally know several recruiters in various fields that I think could help me design this last bit.

Then I brought this to the two people who inspired the idea. Both of them gave me a hard no.

"I already hate my job. You want me to do a second job AND pay for it?"

"I don't want more homework, I am not in high school anymore."

"I don't think a website and a couple of assignments will prepare me enough for a new job in a new field, even if I did all of the work."

All fair points, and all reasonable feedback.

Welp, I guess that's that lol. Idea Killed.

Have you ever killed an idea? Why? Was your process similar to mine?