Charles HudsonFounder and Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures

Do pivots rarely work?

12 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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Charles Hudson (speaking in a YouTube clip) discusses how founders and investors approach business pivots. He cautions against hastily switching ideas—distinguishing deliberate pivots from ‘flailing’—and advises founders to pause, evaluate whether to change product, customer, or market, and ensure the new direction is well thought-out and that the team fits the new plan.

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Elad Gill's book has a really good framework for pivots that I really like. And, you know, most of the time when our portfolio companies, Yousef come to us and they tell me when to pivot, I'm like, are we pivoting or are we flailing? I think the thing that's missing sometimes from this pivot conversation is sometimes the best thing to do when you realize the thing that you're working on isn't working is to actually take a pause, take a beat, step back, and say, hey, we tried something. It didn't work. What are we going to do? Are we going to try to build for the same customer with a different product? Are we going to try to redeploy the same product to a different customer? Are we going to, like, change markets? I find these wild pivots are really hard, and oftentimes they're not well thought out. And sometimes you have a team that doesn't make sense for that new company. I don't know that every founder takes pivots seriously, but I understand the desire. Like, hey, the thing we were working on isn't working. We got to find something else and fast. But I'm like, the worst thing you can do is go from one bad idea to immediately pivoting into something else that's equally poorly thought out. Give yourself time to make sure that the new thing is good or.