You initial business plan may appear crystal clear. Still, you should expect that you may end up changing your plan drastically. And having that readiness for change in mind may save your company and guide it to success. Yes, that is wonderful news. First you spend a million hours carefully drafting a business plan and then you should always have the readiness to abandon your original plan – and start doing something else … something more profitable.
Why Pivoting matters?
Apparently those Internet startups that pivot once or twice…
- have a 3.6 times greater user growth than those that stick with the plan
- raise 2.5 times more money than those that stick with the plan
- avoid risks that are related to scaling up prematurely
Pivoting like Flickr
Probably at least half of the Internet’s top brands were initially doing something totally different than the thing they are now known for. For example, Flickr image hosting site was initially a (massively multiplayer) online game called ‘Neverending’ with a fancy picture swapping feature. Then the game makers noticed that this fancy picture swapping feature was the thing that the users really wanted. So, they threw the game out of the window, launched flickr.com and became bought by Yahoo for $35 million.
So, expect the unexpected to happen and it more likely will
Pivot, Flickr, startup, strategy