There are only a few businesses that end up being successful in the exact way that their startups envisioned it. Given that the world is changing rapidly, pivoting is crucial for the survival of your startup. In fact, some of the extraordinarily successful businesses around us are a product of pivots.
The success of a startup can depend on numerous factors which are difficult to predict. You could have bad timing, wrong audience targeting, sudden market disinterest, or a big competitor. Instead of being stuck to your original idea which would anyway lead to bad results, you can pivot your business in a new direction.
Let’s take a look at nine successful startup pivots of all times:
PayPal
PayPal was initially launched as Confinity, a security software company for handheld devices like PalmPilots. After failing to make a mark, Confinity started ‘beaming’ payments through such handheld devices. In 2000, Confinity merged with X.com, a financial services company founded by Elon Musk. Reincarnated as PayPal, it became the preferred way of receiving payments for sellers on eBay. PayPal even remained as a subsidiary of eBay from 2002 to 2014.
In 2014, PayPal hived off from eBay as a separate publicly-traded company. PayPal sparked a new trend of online money transfer and is currently one of the world’s largest internet payment systems. Earlier this year, Paypal completed its largest acquisition to date by acquiring Honey Science Corp., a browser extension that aggregates online coupons for e-commerce websites.
Starbucks
The coffee giant started as a store selling coffee beans and coffee roasting equipment. Howard Schultz, a sales representative for a company, visited Starbucks, fell in love with the products, and was hired as the head of marketing. On a business trip to Milan, he thought of turning Starbucks into a cafe selling espressos and cappuccinos. However, this idea was not palatable to the founders of Starbucks. Finally, in 1987, the founders sold Starbucks to Schultz, and he got a chance to transform the store into a cafe.
Since then, Starbucks has witnessed a meteoric rise and finally went public in 1992. In 2019, it raked in a revenue of USD 26,509 million.
Twitter started out as Odeo in 2005. It was a platform for discovering and subscribing to podcasts. On account of intense pressure from iTunes, Odeo decided to pivot. Odeo employees were asked to pitch new ideas and Jack Dorsey, an employee of Odeo, pitched the idea of a microblogging site to share real-time updates — what we now know as Twitter.
It is currently one of the largest social media platforms globally, with more than 321 million monthly active users.
Yelp
Yelp started as an email-based referral network to locate local businesses. But in 2004, no one cared about reviews of local businesses. When this model failed to make a mark on the audience and investors, Yelp pivoted — the founders discovered that users enjoyed writing reviews of the businesses or service providers they were using. They changed their business model and stuck to that. By 2006, the Yelp website received more than one million visitors.
YouTube
The video-sharing giant was originally a dating site! It allowed the users to upload their videos to let their prospective partners know what they were looking for. When the founders saw people using this service, they decided to pivot and share videos of all kinds.
At present, users watch at least a billion hours’ worth of videos on YouTube, and the platform makes money through the ads plugged in the videos.
Groupon
Groupon is synonymous with amazing deals. But that’s not how it all started.
Groupon used to be The Point, a platform that allowed people to support a cause. This received minimal attention until some users decided that the cause they wanted to support was saving money by purchasing the same item in bulk. This nudged the founders to pivot, and Groupon became a marketplace that connects the users with local businesses and offers them great discounts.
Slack
It is hard to believe that this indispensable tool for workplace communication was originally a popular video game called Glitch.
This multiplayer game was focused on a variety of collaborative activities. While the game was not a massive hit, it forced the founders to pivot and develop a product based on socialization and collaboration. This led to the development of the communication platform Slack.
This app started as Burbn, a location-based check-in app that allowed you to share photos as well. However, the founders felt that the app was too cluttered and won’t hit it off with the audience. In a bid to pivot, the founders decided to rebuild the app and retain only one feature — sharing photographs.
The app called Instagram was finally launched in October 2010 and reached one million users by December 2010. In April 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for USD 1 billion in cash and equity.
Netflix
The last one to make it to this list is a business that has never shied away to change with time.
Netflix started as a mail-order DVD service. When the founders realized that the model would become obsolete due to the internet boom in the 2000s, they pivoted to a streaming service. As other streaming services started mushrooming, Netflix managed a second pivot in 2013 when it began commissioning original content.
This led to an exponential rise in the subscriber base. At present, Netflix is one of the world’s largest OTT platforms.
Is it time for your business to pivot?
The pandemic has shown us that businesses that embrace the change have a far better chance of staying relevant and expanding their revenues. Hence it is imperative for every business to know when to pivot.
But are you wondering if it is time to rewrite the business strategy or do you simply need to reposition your product? As a business owner, the prospect of pivoting may seem scary, and that’s why you need a mentor. Jupiter Business Mentors has been set up with the intention of connecting mentors to the start-up community and small & medium business enterprises so that you can learn from their experiences and grow your business.
With 35+ expert mentors across the industry on the same platform, Jupiter Business Mentors make it incredibly easy to find the right mentor for you. All you need to do is create a profile so that Jupiter Business Mentors can connect you to your mentor.
Check out how Jupiter Business Mentors can assist and avail 90 minutes of free sessions with any six mentors on the platform.
