The 1 Thing That Can Save Your Sinking Startup
Getting off on a bad foot is not fatal for young companies. Serial-entrepreneur Steve Blank explains how a pivot can turn things around.
By Steve Blank •
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Startups are inherently chaotic. Rapid shifts in business models is what differentiates startups from established companies.
Pivots -- a term coined by Eric Ries -- are the essence of entrepreneurship and the key to startup success. If you can't pivot -- quickly -- chances are you will fail.
"Pivoting" is when you change a fundamental part of the business model. It can be as simple as recognizing that your product was priced incorrectly. It can be more complex if you find the your target customer or users need to change or the feature set is wrong or you need to "repackage" a monolithic product into a family of products or you chose the wrong sales channel or your customer acquisition programs were ineffective.
As a founder, you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently, because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that your original well-thought-out business model will quickly become irrelevant.
For a better understanding of pivots, watch this 2-minute video:
