The speaker opens by expressing dislike for the buzzword "pivot" but acknowledges widespread usage. He defines "pivot" broadly (changes in goals, viewpoints, or actions) and then narrows to the startup meaning: switching directions—often revenue model—to a Plan B when the first model fails. Pivoting is framed neither purely desperate nor always successful: it can discover growth but also harm morale and investor confidence. The speaker lists four reasons pivots usually fail (investors lose confidence; sales, engineering, and other teams leave or tune out) and asks whether continual reimagining is desirable.
Chapters
I hate the word pivot, and still I use it all the time. In disliking it, I'm not alone. In recent years, business publications have included the word pivot in their list of buzzwords labeled overused, ridiculous, and to avoid it is indeed an overused term. Pivot can mean making a change in just about any sense. A business person can pivot their goals to something more fruitful. A politician can pivot their viewpoints to avoid backlash. A speaker can take a question that might be on a specific subject and moving to answer it on their terms. A basketball player pivots forward and reverse, a user in Excel creates a pivot table, and anyone can unpivot at any time and go back to what they were doing before. In the business world, and specifically in the startup community, pivoting is referring to a business change ranging from mild to dramatic. For a startup company, it usually means to switch directions on how they make their revenue, often after their first plan failed. When the first business model is not working, and this happens more often than not, the founder and the team pivot to Plan B. Pivoting doesn't necessarily mean desperation. It can be a tool to discover additional growth. There are a number of examples of successful startup pivots, and then there are others that failed. The prevalence of both the missing pivot and a pivot gone bad indicates that pivoting is an important option to consider for growing startups, but one that can go wrong. Given that a pivot can potentially fix almost any failure, pivoting shouldn't be considered an act of desperation, but rather a reasonable response to address fairly common issues. It is just part of the startup process, but there is a negative impact of moving to Plan B. People need a bold vision to believe in. And when you say, here's another bold vision we should go after, you're also admitting that your prior bold vision was completely wrong. And so here are four reasons why startup pivots usually do not work. Investors lose confidence. The sales team will leave, the engineering team will leave, and the rest of the team will tune out. Is pivot just a new form of failing? Despite all the negativity and risk, some companies constantly pivot. Or, to use a more positive phrase, they are continually reimagining themselves. Should you do that too?
