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Unfortunate startup pivots (a short list) - by Andrew Chen

andrewchen.substack.com · 955 words · saved by 1 readers

recently I've been working with very early-stage startups via SPEEDRUN, our program to invest $750k each into preseed/seed startups (btw, <2 weeks left to apply to SR4 in SF!) and the topic of pivoting often comes up. Early startups tend to pivot. Sometimes they learn a lot of new lessons, and the next idea is better, and you get the Glitch→Slack move, or Justin.tv→Twitch. But there’s also a pattern of unfortunate pivots, which don’t seem to work. And I want to tell you about some of them. Thanks for reading @andrewchen! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. a brief list of unfortunate pivots: going from B2B to consumer. The founding team's superpower is selling to enterprise customers, and having a deep network in a specific vertical. But now you want to pivot to an AI meme maker focused on cute animals? Yes, I understand your daughter loves the idea. Yes, I realize you've always wanted to build something in consumer. But this is very hard. (Interestingly enough

recently I've been working with very early-stage startups via SPEEDRUN, our program to invest $750k each into preseed/seed startups (btw, <2 weeks left to apply to SR4 in SF!) and the topic of pivoting often comes up. Early startups tend to pivot. Sometimes they learn a lot of new lessons, and the next idea is better, and you get the Glitch→Slack move, or Justin.tv→Twitch. But there’s also a pattern of unfortunate pivots, which don’t seem to work. And I want to tell you about some of them. a brief list of unfortunate pivots: going from B2B to consumer. The founding team's superpower is…

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