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> YC often also mentors founders on pivots It doesn't seem unlikely to me that YC coined or at least popularized 'the pivot' in the context of changing busines

> YC often also mentors founders on pivots It doesn't seem unlikely to me that YC coined or at least popularized 'the pivot' in the context of changing business / startup directions. The first mention of using the word in that sense is in this comment [1] which explicitly mentions the usage by YC, while it only gets used when talking about pivot tables or more traditional uses of the word before that. Edit: The "Lean Startup" blog series [2], which was quite influential, mentions 'the pivot' a little earlier than the post above, and really seems to coin it, so I guess that's the source (edit again: wrong :D). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806601 [2] https://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/06/pivot-dont-jump-to-new-vision.html https://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/06/pivot-dont-jum...

dang 8mo ago
That's a fun question! 806601 was from Sept 2009. I found 3 earlier cases of 'pivot' in the startup sense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699611 (July 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676514 (June 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562739 (April 2009) All 3 of those posts were by YC founders, so the term was obviously in circulation by then. The last of them includes a (broken) likn to this article: https://web.archive.org/web/20090703130211/https://redeye.firstround.com/2009/03/pivoting-and-yogi-berra.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090703130211/https://redeye.fi.... Edit: that one was discussed here, but the comments didn't say the p-word: Yogi Berra wisdom for startups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=537331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=537331 - March 2009 (9 comments)

dang 8mo ago

That's a fun question! 806601 was from Sept 2009. I found 3 earlier cases of 'pivot' in the startup sense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699611 (July 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676514 (June 2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562739 (April 2009) All 3 of those posts were by YC founders, so the term was obviously in circulation by then. The last of them includes a (broken) likn to this article: https://web.archive.org/web/20090703130211/https://redeye.firstround.com/2009/03/pivoting-and-yogi-berra.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090703130211/https://redeye.fi.... Edit: that one was discussed here, but the comments didn't say the p-word: Yogi Berra wisdom for startups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=537331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=537331 - March 2009 (9 comments)