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"Few companies are the result of a successful pivot." I balance this statement against the notion of many incubators, whom I know/understand to focus heavily o
by jroseattle 13y ago
"Few companies are the result of a successful pivot."
I balance this statement against the notion of many incubators, whom I know/understand to focus heavily on the founding team more so than the idea. While the statement isn't damning in that respect, it does suggest that there's quite a bit more to success than just the people involved.
Incubators aren't necessarily trying to fund the next billion-dollar idea, but I'm not sure the statement doesn't apply to all companies, regardless of exit valuation.
- lionheart 13y agoCouldn't Twitter be considered a pivot from Odeo?
- jroseattle 13y agoI'm not familiar enough with the history of Twitter and Odeo to say one way or the other.
- bpicolo 13y agoTwitter is just a new business, not a pivot.
- KaoruAoiShiho 13y agoPivots are a redefinition of a failed attempt. The part about how most of the companies are made by 30+ people who have worked together and most of them having had founder experience seems to indicate that they've had had failures in their past. It seems mostly a semantical issue to me. The impression I get is that pivots are neither a positive nor a negative indicator. It is neutral.
- jacques_chester 13y agoPivots are an attempt to internalise the market-fitting function inside the firm. Instead of failing at a company-bankruptcy level, the idea is to fail at a business-model level. However, company-bankruptcy is a much stronger signal, including to other companies and investors. Either way, the overall market-fitting function still resembles a kind of optimisation by simulated annealing -- local hill-climbing with a moderate degree of randomisation.
- melvinmt 13y agoInstagram was a pivot.