“Start With Why” Simon Sinek proposed in his 2009 bestseller. So why Pivotal?
Since 2001, I have launched four tech companies. All of them took off quickly. However, after some years, they all hit a phase where growth plateaued or revenues even started to decline. Despite early momentum, my companies suddenly found themselves in urgent need of finding a new direction. During such phases, many challenges emerge: first, there is a massive need to reduce costs. Then, an abundance of ideas come up for potential future paths. What makes it worse: different stakeholder interests lead to power plays, the data on potential future paths are not consistent, and oftentimes you are already pretty exhausted from the journey. For us, it felt each time like the perfect storm, inherently stressful.
The concept of a “pivot” became a buzzword in the startup world after Eric Ries introduced it in his 2011 book “Lean Startup”. In my ventures, pivoting was oviously an urgent necessity. However, there was no clear, structured approach to pivoting. We relied on spontaneous and opportunistic trial-and-error methods. Looking at the experience of hundreds of other tech companies in similar situations, this still seems to be the dominant way pivots are approached today.
A pragmatic framework could greatly benefit many tech leaders, I concluded. This led to the creation of Pivotal and its underlying concepts. Pivotal is a compilation of my own experiences and insights I wish I had known earlier. It integrates current research on pivots, based on hundreds of examined cases, and it builds on proven business model development concepts like the Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder.
So the “Why?” is pretty straight forward: The majority of tech founders run into pivotal phases, sooner or later. And there are better ways to pivot than trial and error. My mission is to provide systematic and data-driven support to the large group of founders, board members and investors of stuck tech ventures in order to pivot faster, and better, and to find a sustainable future for their company, and themselves.