Billion-Dollar Pivots: Key Lessons Behind 3 Incredible Success Stories
What do a financial services chatting app, a “never-ending” online mulitplayer game, and a 24/7 livestream of a startup founder’s life have in common? They were all false-starts that eventually became billion dollar businesses.
We all know the famous pivot stories behind Twitter, Instagram, and Groupon, but here are three lesser-known examples that provide valuable lessons for founders who want to learn from their successes as well as their mistakes.
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Mark Organ, founder of Eloqua and Influitive
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Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr and Slack
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Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, co-founders of Justin.tv and Twitch
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5 Key Lessons Behind Successful Startup Pivots
- Validate your assumptions: Take nothing for granted and challenge every idea you come up with. Organ’s story is a great example of the importance of taking a scientific, iterative (aka lean startup) approach. By testing their hypotheses and being extremely honest with the data/answers they got back, the Eloqua team was able to steer themselves away from the path they thought they should be on, towards the path that would actually get them somewhere.
- Don’t get too attached to your original idea: Kan and Schear didn’t launch Justin.tv to stream video games, but they didn’t hesitate to jump in that direction once they saw all the interest, either. Imagine if they hadn’t been able to broaden their original vision for the site as just a platform for broadcasting Kan’s life. By listening to their users and paying attention to their data they were able to take Justin.tv in a new direction they never would have imagined.
- Strip it down. Ask yourself whether there’s any aspect of your solution that can be radically simplified, or better yet, spun out as a standalone product. Take a cue from examples like Flickr, Slack, and Instagram (or, more recently, Meerkat) by focusing on doing one thing, and doing it extremely well.
- Don’t take things too personally: That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be passionate or even obsessed with solving a particular problem. But it does mean you shouldn’t fixate on one particular way of doing it. Let go of your ego and be open to other options. Focus on your why, then iterate to (re)discover the best what and how that gets you there.
- Dip a toe before you dive in: Before you decide to do something big like dominate a particular market or create a massive online game that never ends, try developing quick, inexpensive ways to put out feelers and see how receptive people are to your idea. Send out a survey. Create a basic landing page. There are many approaches and experiments you can conduct. The key is to keep it simple and exert the least amount of effort necessary to achieve the desired result. That holds true to any business activity, not just launching a startup.
Bonus: 16 Lessons from Successful Tech Entrepreneurs Who Failed & Bounced Back
In the tech world, you don’t actually get a prize for failing. What counts is how you bounce back. That’s why we’re hosting our Fail Fast March Madness Tournament. Check out the bracket and make your picks for the most resilient entrepreneur in tech. Vote now.
Photo by Doran
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