5 ms·

Pivots are a Trap

77 points by canterburry 14y ago

CesareBorgia 14y ago
I was kind of hoping that this was a story about employees of Pivotal (Pivots) causing trouble.
- canterburry 14y ago
  ...and why do you want employees of Pivotal to be causing troubles?
DanielRibeiro 14y 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-not-the-vision/ http://www.marywisemandesign.com/pivot-change-the-strategy-n...
- cwp 14y 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.
  - crazygringo 14y 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?
    - gfodor 14y ago
      The traditional definition of refactoring is making well-understood, deterministic transformation of code from one state to another in a way that provably has no effects on the behavior. For example, Extract Method or Inline Variable are refactorings that can be automated by your IDE and by definition will not break anything. Nowadays people seem to use "refactoring" to mean "changing code without adding new front-facing features." This is bad as it causes large, scary changes to fall into the realm of "refactoring." Refactoring, if you want to live by its original definition, should be a relatively mindless, safe series of small well understood steps.
      - crazygringo 14y ago
        Interesting. So, taking a widget with CSS styling full of negative margins and redundant <div>'s and "!important"'s and font-sizes which overwrite each other five times... And cleaning it up so that each element and rule does exactly what it should be designed to do, in 1/5 of the number of CSS rules, and is now easily added to, but looks exactly the same in the end... If that's not called refactoring, what is it supposed to be called? I would hate to use terms like "cleaning up code" or "improving code" because they're so horribly vague (they could be about merely changing tabs to spaces, or include adding whole new features). Suggestions?
        gfodor 14y ago
        Honestly in that example I think you're probably safely within the classic definition, since its just a gap in tooling that makes it you can't make those types of transformations automatically in baby steps. Here's an example of someone using it wrong: "We are going to refactor the API call to have 5 parameters instead of 4." The word they are looking for here is "change" or "extend", and they're falling back on "refactor" since they think it makes them sound smarter.
        crazygringo 14y ago
        OK, now I get how people misuse it, I totally agree :)
hanibash 14y 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-people-to-prog http://jmtame.posterous.com/this-is-how-you-actually-teach-p...
- dlevine 14y 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.
emmett 14y 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.
- canterburry 14y 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 14y 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?
  - emmett 14y 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 14y 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 14y ago
I think any story on Pivots deserve to have the story of the Fab Pivot http://www.slideshare.net/fabulis/fab-2011-timeline http://www.slideshare.net/fabulis/fab-2011-timeline
colevscode 14y 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.
johnconroy 14y ago
I find no value in articles like this. Common sense dictates that one shouldn't change tack ("pivot" or whatever useless buzz-word you want) until the guestimated value of switching (less the cost) exceeds your estimation of the probability that you will succeed on your current course(times the guestimated value of the new product). Of course those things are impossible to judge accurately, hence it comes down to gut: "should we pivot?" Of course there comes a time when it makes sense to do so... the question is when? I'm not sure any kind of model can be brought to bear to help one decide. Certainly, arguing against "pivots" on principle is just... stupid

Pivots are a Trap

77 points by canterburry 14y ago

CesareBorgia 14y ago

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

canterburry 14y ago
...and why do you want employees of Pivotal to be causing troubles?

DanielRibeiro 14y 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-not-the-vision/ http://www.marywisemandesign.com/pivot-change-the-strategy-n...

cwp 14y 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.
- crazygringo 14y 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?
  - gfodor 14y ago
    The traditional definition of refactoring is making well-understood, deterministic transformation of code from one state to another in a way that provably has no effects on the behavior. For example, Extract Method or Inline Variable are refactorings that can be automated by your IDE and by definition will not break anything. Nowadays people seem to use "refactoring" to mean "changing code without adding new front-facing features." This is bad as it causes large, scary changes to fall into the realm of "refactoring." Refactoring, if you want to live by its original definition, should be a relatively mindless, safe series of small well understood steps.
    - crazygringo 14y ago
      Interesting. So, taking a widget with CSS styling full of negative margins and redundant <div>'s and "!important"'s and font-sizes which overwrite each other five times... And cleaning it up so that each element and rule does exactly what it should be designed to do, in 1/5 of the number of CSS rules, and is now easily added to, but looks exactly the same in the end... If that's not called refactoring, what is it supposed to be called? I would hate to use terms like "cleaning up code" or "improving code" because they're so horribly vague (they could be about merely changing tabs to spaces, or include adding whole new features). Suggestions?
      - gfodor 14y ago
        Honestly in that example I think you're probably safely within the classic definition, since its just a gap in tooling that makes it you can't make those types of transformations automatically in baby steps. Here's an example of someone using it wrong: "We are going to refactor the API call to have 5 parameters instead of 4." The word they are looking for here is "change" or "extend", and they're falling back on "refactor" since they think it makes them sound smarter.
        crazygringo 14y ago
        OK, now I get how people misuse it, I totally agree :)

hanibash 14y 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-people-to-prog http://jmtame.posterous.com/this-is-how-you-actually-teach-p...

dlevine 14y 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.

emmett 14y 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.

canterburry 14y 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 14y 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?
- emmett 14y 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 14y 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 14y ago

I think any story on Pivots deserve to have the story of the Fab Pivot http://www.slideshare.net/fabulis/fab-2011-timeline http://www.slideshare.net/fabulis/fab-2011-timeline

colevscode 14y 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.

johnconroy 14y ago

I find no value in articles like this. Common sense dictates that one shouldn't change tack ("pivot" or whatever useless buzz-word you want) until the guestimated value of switching (less the cost) exceeds your estimation of the probability that you will succeed on your current course(times the guestimated value of the new product). Of course those things are impossible to judge accurately, hence it comes down to gut: "should we pivot?" Of course there comes a time when it makes sense to do so... the question is when? I'm not sure any kind of model can be brought to bear to help one decide. Certainly, arguing against "pivots" on principle is just... stupid