List of startups/companies that had successful pivots
| Company | Now | Early days | Reason for pivot | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 WhatsApp |
Messaging app | App that would show statuses for other people like "On the flight to Munich, send email instead of calling me." | Users started using it to ping each other with statuses like, “I woke up late,” or “I’m on my way.” At some point it sort of became instant messaging. | source |
 Youtube |
Video-sharing platform | Dating website for single people to make videos introducing themselves and saying what they were looking | Despite offering to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to YouTube, nobody came forward. So they decided to remove the "dating" part and allow all types of videos. | source |
 Slack |
Instant messaging platform | Browser-based massively multiplayer online game called Glitch. | "Glitch has not attracted an audience large enough to sustain itself." The next best idea they had was to productize and market an internal communications tool that they had built to run Glitch. | source |
 Instagram |
Photo-sharing social network | A mobile app called Burbn that let you: check in to locations, make plans, earn points, post pictures, and much more. | They wanted to focus on being really good at one thing. So they basically cut everything in the Burbn app except for its photo, comment, and like capabilities | source |
 Twitter |
Microblogging service | Podcasting platform called Odeo. | Apple released iTunes that took all the podcasting market. Odeo realized the danger, and they started holding official hackathons to search for new products; one of them became Twitter. | source |
 Shopify |
eCommerce platform | Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. | Dissatisfied with the existing e-commerce products on the market, Lütke, instead built his own. | source |
 Netflix |
Streaming service | Online DVD rental store sent by mail. | Netflix had considered offering movies online, but there were speeds and bandwith problem in mid-2000. After discovering YouTube, and witnessing how popular streaming services, they introduced video on demand via internet. | source |
 Yelp |
Places recommendation service | Email-based referral network to ask friends for place recommendation. | Users were not answering requests for referrals, but were using the "Real Reviews" feature, which allowed them to write reviews unsolicited. | source |
 Nintendo |
Video game company | Playing card company. | Nintendo experimented in other areas of business like: taxi company, hotel chain, TV network, instant rice; but none of them were succesful. Then they tried to focus on video games. | source |
 Paypal |
Online payment system | Mobile encryption service -> Payment between PDA -> Web payment | For the encryption service, they didn't want to be dependent on others to build application. For the PDA payment, not everyone had a PDA. | source |
 Flickr |
Photo sharing community | Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called Neverending | They focused on a photo-sharing feature developed for Neverending. In the early days, no one knew how to store the pictures they took. Most photo sites were more about uploading your pictures in hope you would pay to have them printed. | source |
 Groupon |
Online deal marketplace | The Point, a web platform based on the "tipping point" principle that would utilize social media to get people together to accomplish a goal. | The Point was intended to organize people around some sort of cause or goal. It gained only modest traction in Chicago until a group of users decided their cause would be saving money. They wanted to round up people to buy the same product in order to receive a group discount. | source |
 Nokia |
Mobile phone and tech | Producing rubber | Invented a lot and diverse range of products | source |
 Play-Doh |
Toys for kids | Wall cleaner | The market for wallpaper cleaning putty decreased substantially. They had seen a newspaper article about making art projects with the wallpaper cleaning putty, and the students enjoyed it. | source |
 Western Union |
International money transfer | One of the largest telegram service company | Decline of telegraphy | source |
 Android |
Operating system for mobile phone | Operating system for digital cameras | The company then decided that the market for cameras was not large enough for its goals | source |
 BioWare |
Video game company | Medical simulation program | The founders relaxed by playing computer games and they realized that this was where their passion was. The medical field was satisfying and lucrative, but it was time for the group to move on. | source |
 Segment |
Customer Data Platform | Classroom lecture tool | When the product was deployed in the classroom, all the students opened their laptop and went straight to Facebook instead of using the program. | source |
 ARM |
Designing computer processors | Acorn Computers Ltd., producers of computer systems originally designed to run slot machines and other computers | They need powerful CPU. After approaching Intel for the 80286 core and being rebuffed, Acorn decided to develop their own processor. | source |
 Twitch |
Live streaming service | Justin.TV, where Justin Kan, one of the co-founder, wore a camera on his head and livestreamed his life 24/7 | It never really took off and they were running out of runway. Then they noticed that the one area growing faster than any other was videogame streaming, and rebuilt the whole company around that. | source |
 Berkshire Hathaway |
Conglomerate holding company | Textile manufacturing company | Warren Buffet bought a controlling interest in the company and fired Stanton, who run the company previously. Buffet then started to pivot from the failing textile business by acquiring a couple of insurance companies (including GEICO). | source |
 Microsoft |
Operating system and office suite | Traf-O-Data, whose objective was to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers | The company had only modest success but the experience was instrumental in the creation of Microsoft Corporation a few years later. | source |
 Toyota |
Automobile manufacturer | Manufactured automatic looms, device used to weave cloth and tapestry. | Son inherited the business and wanted to establish success independent of his father's, and believed the automobile industry would grow. He sold the loom patents to raise capital. | source |
 Mentor Graphics |
EDA and CAD Software | Sold turn-key CAD workstations (i.e. pre-installed EDA and CAD software, pre-configured network, on Apollo (Unix-like) workstations. | Selling workstations with pre-installed software made sense in 1980s because often customers had no other computers and no LAN. New competitors sold just software and thus had lower overhead. Customers got more sophisticated they didn't need managed workstations. | source |
 Okta |
Identity Management | SaaSure, focused on monitoring and reporting on the reliability of cloud services | Todd, the co-founder, showed SaaSure to 100 people and the customers kept asking about identity. So he listened and pivoted the company. | source |
 Audible |
Audiobook and podcast service | Audible Player, portable media player released in 1998 | Hardware is hard - they had trouble competing with other companies who simply did hardware better (e.g. Apple). So they instead licensed audio codec technology and focused on developing content. | source |
 Pixar |
Computer Animated Movies | Selling Pixar Image Computer, hardware for computer animation | Insufficient sales of hardware product. | source |
 IBM |
IT services, cloud, software | Sell physical, punch card based tabulating machines. | Invention of computers. | source |
 Upstart |
Direct to consumer lending | Allow people to sell their future earnings for cash today or Income Sharing Agreement, "Kickstarter for people." | "This income sharing thing we thought would take off like crazy just wasn't taking off." But the launch of the loan product made the path forward clear. "The interest and volume of that was so dramatic, that three days later, we end-of-lifed the ISA product." | source |
 Soylent |
Meal replacement, nutrition. | Inexpensive cell phone towers. | Cell phone towers were too hard to break into, the founders ran out of money, but still had to eat. So they played around with a meal replacement formula, and invented "Soylent". | source |
 IMG.LY |
Providing SDKs for image processing | Originally started as a social image sharing site for Twitter (until Twitter decided to do it themself) | While running a dying service they started licensing their image processing algorithms and eventually pivoted to a successfull SDK business | source |
 Branch |
Mobile deep links and measurement | Kindred Photo Books, a mobile app for creating physical photo books. | Technical challenges made non-ad growth marketing extremely difficult for mobile apps. The founders realized that all app developers faced a similar problem, and packaged their homegrown deep linking and measurement tools into a new product. | source |
 elvah |
Sustainable mobility | Software agency with customers in Media, Sports and Travel | As customers dropped out due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team was faced with the choice to either shut down the business or to pivot to a product company, allowing them to work on something that was dear to their hearts. | source, source |
