In 2012, there was a game called Glitch. It was the brainchild of Stewart Butterfield, a tech visionary who had previously founded Flickr.
Glitch faced two big hurdles: built on Flash (killed by Steve Jobs back in these days…), and a storyline that players could finish in just two days.
Not the best conditions to achieve a sustainable, recurring business.
@ben horowitz from a16z, at that time an investor into the company behind Glitch, shares the choices Stewart presented to him in a call (see YouTube Link in the 1. comment):
– shut down the game and return the $6 mio left on the bank account,
– or pivot completely to an internal tool developed during Glitch’s creation.
Ben left the choice to Stewart, and he went for option 2.
That tool became Slack, acquired by Salesforce for 27bn $ 9 years later, in 2021.
Here are three main learnings I took out from Ben Horowitz’ reflections:
1. Investors know that things go wrong: Being open and humble and coming up with a completely different idea maybe the better approach than fighting endlessly for something that hardly can be turned around.
2. Secret Power: Stewart stumbled across a daily problem, that probably many other smaller software companies encountered: inefficient communication in software development. This insight was his secret weapon and made the pivot very authentic.
3. The value of hard times: breakthrough ideas sometimes only show up in hopeless situations. So, paradoxically, while things may look worse than ever, going through hard times may be a mandatory step to open a perspective for something better than ever thought.
This tale underscores a truth I’ve seen in my own work at Pivotal AG: pivoting isn’t just about changing direction; it’s about seizing the opportunities that may be hidden behind your current setup.
Have you ever stumbled upon a game-changing insight during a challenging project, and completely changed direction?