I was a co-founder of a startup in 2014, and we applied to an incubator that had experience with hardware startups, and domain expertise.
Here's where it got interesting, my co-founder was friends with the founder of another much more established startup in a vaguely similar space. The leader of the incubator was under the impression we were focusing on a different idea (we considered as a secondary, later opportunity) and concerned about a conflict between the two startups. If we had listened to his suggestion, we probably could have come up with a successful product opportunity.
At the end of the day, It was my own stupid fault for not listening closer to what was said, and analyzing the option to pivot into a more successful path.
Here's where it got interesting, my co-founder was friends with the founder of another much more established startup in a vaguely similar space. The leader of the incubator was under the impression we were focusing on a different idea (we considered as a secondary, later opportunity) and concerned about a conflict between the two startups. If we had listened to his suggestion, we probably could have come up with a successful product opportunity.
At the end of the day, It was my own stupid fault for not listening closer to what was said, and analyzing the option to pivot into a more successful path.