In June 2020, the author's company decided to pivot due to slow revenue growth. They spent six weeks exploring different solutions and identified several lessons that helped them build an open-source data integration platform. The key points of their exploration process include: working on two ideas at a time, focusing on problems to solve rather than solutions, using a common template for evaluating ideas, seeking indicators of potential product-market fit, starting prototyping after enough validation, and reacting during stalemates by revisiting old ideas. The company eventually built an open-source data integration engine called OSS ELT, which addresses the needs of companies that require full control over their data privacy through a self-hosted solution.