The importance of pivoting and the advantage of doing it in the early-stage.
In my previous article, we discussed the bias that frequently occurs in the ideation process and two possibilities to approach that bias. The two possibilities we discussed were both Business and Market pivoting. In Today’s article, I would like to discuss in detail what’s pivoting and how pivoting in this stage is different from pivoting in other stages of a startup.
I can’t assume that this term is known by everyone, because it is mostly used by founders and some business leaders. Pivoting means changing some aspect of its core products or services. Businesses might pivot to better meet customer demand, shift their target audience to boost sales, or some combination of both. I have mainly used two types of pivoting which are business and market pivoting because they are the ones that I have seen mostly being used in the ideation process stage.
When you are starting your company or startup, you might have an idea of what you are going to do, you might have a problem in mind that you are going to solve, and later when you start the ideation process which includes the discovery stage, some startups realize that the problem that they are trying to solve is not considered as a problem on the market to the point your target customers are happy with the solution they have now or they are not even ready to pay for your solution. In that case, you can’t proceed when you see that the problem that you are trying to solve is not there or if you see that solving it won’t sustain your startup. The solution is Business Pivoting, changing the core product idea, and finding another mission or problem to solve.
On the other hand, It is very possible to start with a very good idea, with a mission to solve a relevant problem but in the discovery stage, you realize that the problem that you want to solve is there but not to the people you are targeting now. This means your target customer doesn't necessarily have that problem, but there are other customers who have the problem you want to solve. The solution here is Market pivoting, changing the target customer that you were initially targeting and aiming for the ones that have the problem you are solving.
I have mentioned this in the ideation process because the pivot can happen at any stage of a startup. The pivot idea is triggered by different things. Some startups pivot because there is a new opportunity on the market and they want to seize it, others pivot because of some natural causes that affect the way business is being done. For example, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed a lot of businesses and has triggered so many startups to pivot. Covid-19 changed the nature of some problems and the pivot was the solution to keep their businesses alive.
Pivoting is not an easy topic to approach, but I have decided to discuss it especially when we are still in the early stages of startups because there are a lot of advantages. Some people don’t even consider it as pivoting because there are not many changes that are going to take place. Let’s now discuss one major advantage of having this conversation of pivoting especially in the early stage of our companies Versus considering it later.
Flexibility
It is normal in business to find reasons to change. It can be the core business idea or the market, reasons for change will always be there. But the more your company or startup gets established, the more it becomes hard to pivot. So the first advantage of early-stage startups is that it is easier to consider pivoting than other startups.
Flexibility is one of the qualities a startup founder can have nowadays, the ability to adapt to changes and to react quickly to whatever comes your way. In the early stages, there is that freedom and flexibility to change tactics and techniques as you want to, as the risk of hurting or disturbing your market is low because currently, we assume that you have no customers or they are few to the point you can make changes without any problem.
When you are an already established startup, you have a vision, you have clients and you own a market share, here the risks of changing are high because you are trying to protect what you already have. Even when you see that pivoting is the only solution you remain with, it is still not easy because you can’t risk what you worked for just for a change. When it’s not in the early stages, it requires strong leaders to pivot. That’s why I always encourage founders in their early stages to make sure they are starting with the right problem and the right market because changing it later is always challenging and painful.
In my startup coaching duties, especially when I am working with early-stage startups, I always spend 50% of my time on the discovery, because I know the advantage of starting in the right way. I have mentioned this a million times in my articles, discovery is a continuous process, and changes might occur at any stage in startups, however, in my experience, the way you start will definitely determine how easy or difficult it will be when change is there.
That is why I find it very important to spend much time in discovery so that we can take advantage of being in the early stage and use the flexibility we have to make sure we are starting in the right way. Pivoting is a very wide topic, and we will keep discussing and exploring it in my future articles. I wish you a happy festive season with your families.