Pivots are a Trap

http://blog.thirdyearmba.com/pivots-kill

by canterburry • 14 years ago

77 20 14 years ago

blog.thirdyearmba.com

CesareBorgia• 14 years ago

I was kind of hoping that this was a story about employees of Pivotal (Pivots) causing trouble.

canterburry2• 14 years ago

...and why do you want employees of Pivotal to be causing troubles?

DanielRibeiro• 14 years ago

Interesting. The author quotes Pincus:

One thing I learned is that while your vision should never change, you should keep trying different strategies until one works

And yet, the definition of a pivot, as given by the person that made the term widespread is very similar[1]:

A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision

And the author, at the end seems to actually agree with it:

But it's important to realize that taking different bites of the same apple is very different from biting into an entirely new pear or banana, and it seems like a lot of people are actually doing that

So I guess he is actually warning against one interpretation of a pivot, that is change in vision.

[1] http://www.marywisemandesign.com/pivot-change-the-strategy-n...

cwp• 14 years ago

The word "pivot" is like "refactoring." It's so overused that it's mostly misused, and you can't rely on its meaning any more.

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

I'm curious, how is "refactoring" overused or misused?

To me, it's about cleaning up code in order to make it better-architected and (often) smaller, so there are less opportunities for bugs, and it is more extensible. Are there other uses I'm unaware of?

hanibash• 14 years ago

Our startup, bloc (www.bloc.io), pivoted four times in 8 months, and we're way happy with where we are now.

The vision, or core motivation, never did change though. There's a common thread through all four pivots. In fact the current product looks most similar to the very first. But it's different in important ways that weren't known during pivot 1.

Here's the full story http://jmtame.posterous.com/this-is-how-you-actually-teach-p...

dlevine• 14 years ago

I think Jared is a smart guy and I respect him a lot. However, I think that both Niroka and Officehours.TV could have eventually worked out in some form (they both seemed like credible products when they came out). I think that the key missing ingredient was probably time and some iteration in the solution space (rather than an entirely new product). With that said, I'm glad that you guys found something that worked for you.

emmett2• 14 years ago

Speaking of a cofounder of Justin.tv, I'm not sure what you'd call TwitchTV other than a pivot and it seems to be working out well.

SocialCam as well. Definitely a pivot for us.

canterburry2• 14 years ago

Well, the common thread is still distribution of video content...that to me sounds like the "vision" with attempting different strategies to accomplish it?

RegEx• 14 years ago

TwitchTV is a rebranding. Hell, you guys still use the Justin.tv domain for payment. By far the biggest audience on JustinTV were those interested in watching games, so you honed in on that. What's the difference between JustinTV and TwitchTV besides UI/visuals?

emmett2• 14 years ago

"A live video platform for the whole web" vs. "a social video layer for video games" are very different visions.

The most obvious difference? We have a partner program to help encourage an ecosystem of professional casters and players to form. We never would have built that for Justin.tv.

EREFUNDO• 14 years ago

For our start-up we made a major pivot but it complements the original concept and even expanded it. If a pivot requires significant change in direction and scrapping major elements of your original idea then one really has to think hard before taking the next step.

raverbashing• 14 years ago

I think any story on Pivots deserve to have the story of the Fab Pivot

http://www.slideshare.net/fabulis/fab-2011-timeline

colevscode• 14 years ago

I agree with the spirit of this article. After having changed focus 3 times in the last year I realized that I wasn't giving each project enough time to develop. There were other good reasons for shifting direction, but lack of traction shouldn't have been a factor.

I believe that a common reason for changing direction early is that founders learn a lot about their problem in the first three months. Sometimes they learn that it's the wrong problem for them to tackle. It could still be a great business, but not a good fit for the founders. Prior research can reduce the chance of a "gotcha," but often you must interact with customers to really understand the problem. Yeah, customer dev techniques can speed this up, but it's a process that takes time regardless.

Pivots are a Trap

Related Stories