I had a similar experience. I joined a company about a month before Google launched a competing advertising product (you know, the kind of product Google never kills). The CEO got stuck in some sort of pivot loop where we'd drastically change our product offering every 6 months.
The CEO insisted it wasn't pivoting, it was "refinement", but he also had a really annoying tendency to redefine X to mean "what we do", so he could tell clients and investors "we do X".
When we were discussing me joining the company there was a very clear plan for the product and the path to revenue. Unfortunately, he had one meeting that completely shook his confidence in that direction. After that meeting it was something new every week.
We would build the feature of the week and then it wouldn't immediately catch on and he would decide to scrap it and start something new.
I finally jumped ship when it became clear he wasn't going to commit to a vision and his next idea was that we should make it a social platform.
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There's survivorship bias here. Where's the list of companies that pivoted to oblivion?
I worked with a guy who wanted to pivot every week, then every month.
Basically, he just didn't have enough follow through on specific ideas to either validate or disprove them.
I should have walked away sooner than I did, because we went nowhere.
In general, a pivot needs to come from evidence that it will increase sales, and stay within your core competency.
I had a similar experience. I joined a company about a month before Google launched a competing advertising product (you know, the kind of product Google never kills). The CEO got stuck in some sort of pivot loop where we'd drastically change our product offering every 6 months.
The CEO insisted it wasn't pivoting, it was "refinement", but he also had a really annoying tendency to redefine X to mean "what we do", so he could tell clients and investors "we do X".
I had the same thing happen.
When we were discussing me joining the company there was a very clear plan for the product and the path to revenue. Unfortunately, he had one meeting that completely shook his confidence in that direction. After that meeting it was something new every week.
We would build the feature of the week and then it wouldn't immediately catch on and he would decide to scrap it and start something new.
I finally jumped ship when it became clear he wasn't going to commit to a vision and his next idea was that we should make it a social platform.
You would be right – if the point was “just pivot and you’ll succeed”. It’s not.