A pivot is a nice word from startup land. It generally means that we actually failed, but gives us some “licence in language” so we don’t feel like a total douche bag for getting our infallible startup idea wrong. But sometimes the pivot, is an actual pivot and not just a fail, a change in direction which creates a new path. The valuable pivots, are those slight changes in direction, or elements of focus which take our big idea, and turn into something that should work. But powerful pivots are very difficult to see. They are difficult to see because many of us entrepreneurs dream so big, we falsely believe that focus will steal the big dream from us. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, focus makes big possible.

I should know, because I missed two clear pivots in a startup I founded called rentoid.com. The market was sending me clear signals on a new direction, which was smaller, better and could have been eventually bigger – but I ignored them. I ignored them because I was more in love with the idea than I was with solving people’s problems. The pivots I missed had a much better product/market fit, but I was blind to them. Although I did get an exit, I know it was micro compared to what could have been. Let me explain.

Rentoid.com was a rental marketplace, an Ebay for renting. A very early play on the collaborative consumption market place. The original idea was to be a renting portal for everything. But as we all know, ‘renting’ as an idea is not very focused at all. Everything usually means nothing. What was interesting was that certain categories of ‘rental items’ kept popping up. These categories seemed to have more demand than the others, but they were strange, and even seemed to flirt on the wrong side of the law. As a micro entrepreneur – a self funded startup, I was scared to do anything which was had any legal risk. The two rentals people kept listing were:

(1) People renting out spare bedrooms.
(2) People renting out their cars, and themselves as drivers.

In fact, often times I didn’t allow it – I would delete their listings. When the market was clearly telling me where clear and huge pivots existed for rentoid. You’ve already guessed these were very similar to the business models of Airbnb and Uber. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit it here, but hey isn’t that what blogging is all about? Transparency for the sake of helping of others. Granted, the opportunity and market dynamics are not to say that I would’ve made the pivots a success. What it does say is that the market always knows more than we do. It does say that we need the presence of mind to see emerging opportunities. It does say that we need to love our customers more than our idea. It does say that new business models often involve breaking false monopolies. False monopolies built by those who profit from an incumbent infrastructure.

So here’s my Top 5 pivot finding hacks

1. Growth streams: Look for segments of your audience, or product offer that are getting more attention than the others. Follow the path and kill the slow segments around it.

2. Make it thinner: Constantly look for ways to reduce breadth on the original concept, and find the nugget buried inside. The original idea is almost always too wide.

3. Technology iterations: The pace of change in technology often means a pivot becomes possible once we’ve launched. Keep an eye out for new services and tech which change what’s possible in your chosen market – adapt these quickly if they solve the problem better.

4. Watch your infrastructure: As we build startups we often have to create products and services for ourselves internally. We build things to manage our own business and solve our own problems. These are often valuable for others and can become their own startup or pivot. If we had to build it for us, there’s a very good chance others need it too.

5. Lessons & Education: Given what so much of we do in startups is new, we also invent new techniques to do things. The lessons themselves often become a product – hackathons in themselves have become an amazing form of woodchips form agile methodology. What’s your hackathon equivalent? The technology revolution is writing new rules, that also means we need new teachers.

What we do need to do in our startup is keep a constant eye on the woodchips. The smaller by products of what we started making, because very often the woodchips are what the market wants, something which can be reconfigured, instead of another table.