🔄 When Business Needs a Turn — The Pivot
A friend and entrepreneur reached out to me recently. A real, tangible business — capital assets, turnover, credit lines, contractors. And like everyone right now, she's being hit by forces of varying degrees of manageability. Her question was classic: "What should I do?"
I listened — and wanted to suggest a pivot. Not optimize the old thing, but change direction while keeping the entrepreneurial drive and income. Of course, decisions like this need analysis, numbers, and time. But when you've known someone for years and understand them intuitively, ideas come faster.
What is a pivot?
The core idea behind this trendy term is actually classic Philip Kotler: "Produce what you can sell, not try to sell what you can produce."
Combined with market analysis and flexible thinking, this is what makes a pivot possible.
For an established business — it means changing strategy, industry, market, or even the type of business entirely (the classic cloud-era move: going online). This is never easy — fixed assets, familiar (but shrinking) markets, and an established team all pull you backward. The unknown is scary. But so is staying put.
For a startup — it's a conscious turn: when the product changes its idea, market, or audience to survive and stay relevant. The ability to pivot may be the most valuable startup skill. Investors today respond very positively to flexible teams.
Famous pivot success stories:
🔴 In 2013, a team was building an online game called Glitch. The project failed, but they built an internal chat tool for collaboration. They realized it was more useful than the game itself — and turned it into Slack. I use it every day 👍
🔴 A startup called Burbn was a location-based check-in service similar to Foursquare. Users barely checked in, but actively shared photos. The team noticed — and stripped it down to just the photo function. Instagram was born. Facebook bought it two years later for $1 billion.
🔴 In 2005, a service was conceived as a video dating platform. People ignored the dating concept and just started sharing videos. The founders pivoted fast — and YouTube became the world's #1 video platform.
The bottom line: Each of these projects could have shut down. Instead, they saw the red light ahead and turned onto a clear road. They found where the real value was — and relaunched boldly.
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