Startup Pivots

My preferred version of that saying is from Mike Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face"

I've also heard something along the lines of "a plan is useless but planning is invaluable."

There is a very old version of this, indeed:

“Plans are worthless when the fighting is once begun, and all depends on the inspiration of the moment.” (1877)

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/

But will there be a future pivot? "Tesla pivoted from the original idea of selling cars to robo-taxis in 20xx."

This is great. We also need companies and founders with great visions that ultimately don’t have to pivot. And I’m sure there are many of them.

By the way, is there any source for that blog post that proves its existence and form back to 2006? The Wayback Machine only has it until 2016, but perhaps the URL changed.

You’re right about the gold rush being over. But what certainly remains true is that, although your product may be failing, it could be possible to identify individual features or adjacent markets that are more promising.

Me in 2001 (dot com crash): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2007 (market malaise): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2012 (Facebook IPO): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2019 (finally having learned my lesson): there are probably still plenty of opportunities left, if you know where to look

When I first moved to Palo Alto in 1984 the houses were all underwater (worth less than what was owed on their mortgage) because of the tech crash. The boom had been fun but everybody knew it was over and not coming back. After all, how many disk drives did the world really need anyway? The tech business magazines (upside, red herring, etc.) all had cover stories about how people were fleeing the valley

You’re right, these are perfect additions. No idea how they could have been missed. Thank you!

The full evolution of Flickr from https://businessideaslab.com/flickr-history/

> A project founded in 2004 by Vancouver-based company Ludicorp (coming from the Latin word for ‘play’ actually), Flickr, as we know it today, is nothing like it was supposed to be in the very beginning. In reality, this website was made out to be a kind of a multiplayer online game, which eventually was turned into a chat system with live photo-sharing options. While the team behind Flickr, namely the couple Steward Butterfield and Caterina Fake, was working on quite a big number of settings and possibilities for the project, they ultimately got rid of the coding system for the game and created what is currently viewed as the beginning of Flickr. Later, even the chat system called Flickr Live, which was the basis of the earlier versions of the site was erased since the entire character of the portal has transformed into something a lot more different than the planned too. Also, we must never forget that, just like languages and cooking, the internet is something ever changing and there is nothing still inside the World Wide Web. Every site is what the users want it to be, the users of Flickr didn’t want to chat – they wanted to share their experiences in pictures and not in instant messages.

Well, would you say that the pivot from a dating app to what YouTube is today is a joke? Is that just a refined product? Same for games turning into social networks or productivity tools.

I was listening to a podcast the other day (I can't remember what it was) but when pressed about how the term "pivot" is overused, the intervewee mentioned that the term comes from the idea of one foot being firmly planted and pivoting in new direction. He suggested there are two types of pivots. One of product and one of customer. You can't pivot on both, so, to be a pivot, you are either keeping the same customer but providing them a different product, or keeping the same product and finding a different customer.

As an example, YouTube started as a dating site, but it was a video dating site. They had built the video upload and streaming (product) and kept that but pivoted to serve a different market.

I don't think Twitter really "pivoted", they didn't change market or product really. Ok, they started with SMS, but for a LONG time you could still tweet via SMS (maybe you still can) but the core of Twitter is you can publicly post short messages. Still the same product it ever was.

You would be right – if the point was “just pivot and you’ll succeed”. It’s not.

I worked with a guy who wanted to pivot every week, then every month.

Basically, he just didn't have enough follow through on specific ideas to either validate or disprove them.

I should have walked away sooner than I did, because we went nowhere.

In general, a pivot needs to come from evidence that it will increase sales, and stay within your core competency.

Sure, there are lessons here. And it’s certainly not “just work on anything”. It’s really that the initial idea is often overvalued, as you already said, that execution is more important than ideas, that you should constantly (re)validate your idea, and that you should be ready to pivot.

We know this from “The Lean Startup”, but practical examples can show why some aspects are important. And it’s not just small teams and solo founders from startups and young companies that may place too much importance on a great initial idea. It’s certainly also the general public, where most people belief that successful startups are the result of a genius having a clever idea. See basically every movie about inventions (and young companies). That general public also includes a lot of (potential) investors.

For YouTube and Groupon at least, it definitely was the latter. This can be seen in the sources.

And XKL now seems to make switches, so I guess they've come full circle.