How many times did you pivot?

We also pivoted 3 times for 2 years and continue testing things all the time. I also find out that pivots are different it can be product, or market, or channel. So it is not necessary that everything should be changed. -> 2020 Collaborative learning for employees -> 2021 Customer training -> 2022 User onboarding automation

I went *fully* self employed in 2015. Just today I started the acquisition of things needed for my third business. Not necessarily a pivot in the sense of one umbrella... but numerous pivots to figure out how I want my long term career to look. At 37 it feels late to be figuring this out... But in reality... doing what you love seems a lot better than grinding something out simply because it is established.

Pivoting is important to survive longer-term in the market. But the most important thing is to understand and take a call on when and how to pivot your business. It is part data and part instinct that can guide the founders on this. We had a major pivot in our business model once when we moved from a WordPress plugin sale to a subscription-based WordPress Maintenance service. And many many small pivots in terms of target customers and pricing etc.

Ohh, it's better to ask when was the last month without pivot :)

At first we had one idea in mind, but when we came across a solution... other app ideas emerged on this basis, as a result, instead of one service, we began to create an entire platform, and this is definitely the best thing we decided to do!

We're a young start up but have already pivoted once. The first idea was going well and we had a number of users, but not making any money/wasn't sustainable. We've pivoted to a new (related) product, but still have obligations to our original users, which is difficult to manage without any staff. Still in the process of testing the new idea, but if it doesn't go well, we may consider going back to the original idea and see if it new users will pay decently for it. We're also in the world of academia & non-profits so this may be challenging. Has anyone ever pivoted but then gone back to rework their original product?

Micro pivots all day!

I am honestly astonished that so many entrepreneurs have pivoted so shortly after launching. And some mentioned pivoting multiple times shortly after launching! Hopefully it's because some folks are use the term "pivoting" rather liberally. So just to be clear, when I refer to "pivoting", I'm talking about creating a new direction or changing target markets because something is majorly wrong... which is different than "iterating" or implementing incremental improvements because the product/service is doing relatively well. We all want to be on the side of a problem looking for a solution rather than a solution looking for a problem. Maybe it's just me...but I'm thinking an entrepreneur would want to validate that a significant problem exists...first (i.e. enough potential users and sufficient pain). One of my questions is: did you do conduct any "soft" validation prior to developing a solution? In other words, did you use polls, surveys, or focus groups to: A) determine whether there was significant need/demand, and B) identify any expectations in terms of features or benefits from a solution? Nowadays, there's a rush to be first to market or capture market share. Getting soft data seems much faster and far less costly than developing the product...only to find out later that something's not right. I'm new to this game, so there might be something I'm overlooking. At any rate, if you pivoted AND engaged in this type of pre-development validation, how did your interpretation of the results mislead you? If you pivoted BUT didn't engage in any type of pre-development validation, why not?

Just about to. So only once!

My first business, we pivoted 2xs. It was exhausting and draining, but also always motivating once we acknowledged that we need to make a change. Deciding when to stay the course and when to pivot is hard... looking back I'm not sure whether we got it right.