his spring, Lenny Rachitsky published “the definitive list of successful pivots”.
While you could question how definitive this list is, and if ever it even can be definitive, I find 3 points interesting:
1. Lenny shows that most “hard pivots”, that occur at a later stage, demand for 1-2 years for completion. It relates to my experience: better shoot for 2 years until you have completed a pivot, to be on a safer side.
2. He also looked at the reasons: The two reasons most mentioned were “low retention” and “lukewarm interest”. Both pointing to product market fit problems, at a later stage.
3. Looking at things those companies “kept”, its most often “one feature” or “one piece of tech”. One could translate this to “zoom in” pivots, narrowing down the offering to one piece of the value proposition.
Full list of Lenny Rachitsky : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OEJJbEF5LQS2edQNdJovoMKsbrZV_iEtpfUtU15ZwNs/edit?pli=1&gid=246941585#gid=246941585
and the related blog article: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-of-the-pivot-part-1-the-definitive