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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

This happened less than 2 months after a "pivot to tools": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22040238

Never really seen a "pivot to tools" work (after I tried it with one company, and it failed, I started noticing when others tried it too).

Why do you think it never pans out?

Prob cuz you are doing less with the same customers

Using a tool often requires a lot more work than using (consuming) a service.

Slack is an example

Good example!

It wasn't quite what I thinking as it isn't really "our game startup failed; let's sell game tools" but still it counts.

I see business services companies build tools in their vertical industry and become successful all of the time. You just can't take venture funding.

The question is over a pivot from "I'm going to provide product/service X at a profit due to my tool T" to "Well, I couldn't sell X so I'll sell T to other people who want X". If you couldn't make a go of it, is it really likely others will, or if they can that they will want your tool T to do so?

This is different from either providing a service and successfuly using your own software to do so or providing a service and developing as well tools specifically for your customers.

Slack was suggested by another poster as a company that pulled this off, though I'm not sure the communication tool was considered crucial to the game business.

Fair. I guess it depends on what you determine as a success. 37signals was probably somewhat successful as a dev shop, but obviously not nearly as successful as a project management software one.

In the case of Atrium, it also sounded like their "pivot to tools" was trying to take many of their existing (ex) employees on the legal side, and convert them into clients of the tools.

While the legal and tools companies were together, I'm sure the lawyers enjoyed the shiny tools. But after the "pivot", with the lawyers seemingly going it alone with some of the former clients, it seems likely to me that Atrium (the tool) just wasn't offering enough of a value proposition to make the tool company profitable.

Venture money needs massive growth. Selling a tool to lawyers will get an amount of money per month proportionate to the number of fee-earners. And from the sounds of things, their tools weren't exactly going to be irreplaceable. Anyone got any direct insight as to if the tools themselves were compelling but the pivot failed, or if the tools didn't deliver?

I know several including housecall which is now housecall pro

The pivot never got started, they just announced it. Atrium was continuing their existing model/had the lawyers employed until March 1st.

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