The dark world of pivoting
Charles had always wanted to be a tech entrepreneur. Ever since he was 2 years old, looking at the world through his baby eyes, two things stood out, “Tech” and “Entrepreneur”. In retrospect, the second one was quite a big word for a baby, but it must have been a sign.
This interest led him to teaching himself to program at a very young age (6 or 7 years from memory). You can see where this is going….
Fast forward to today, Charles has been running a business intelligence platform that he created. The platform primarily focused on analysing large data for hospitals. While creating the product was fun for Charles, he was not managing to get paid customers. This was despite the two years of love, blood and sweat he invested into the company.
Being a determined person, Charles was not ready to give up. He got in touch with several successful entrepreneurs on twitter, read books on startups and even enrolled for a business coach. One day while messaging one of his twitter mentors, Elliot, he learned of this idea called “pivot”. He was very intrigued by this. How had he not come across this before?!! All successful companies seem to have pivoted. In fact, several times, before they became a huge success. This was the light bulb moment. Charles needed to pivot and pivot fast in order to survive and succeed. He started looking at schools too, instead of just hospitals. This soon turned to include factories, telecom companies and restaurant chains. After a month, Charles found himself working on a marketplace for skis and snowboards. Even though there was some initial interest, that idea soon plateaued with no paying customers. He then pivoted to creating a debugging platform that used artificial intelligence to fix errors in code snippets. Shortly after, he moved into fashion rentals which was then followed by baby food delivery. And just like that Charles could not stop pivoting. He had reached a dark place.
Now Charles runs a rehab center to help fellow pivoters. As it happens, it was also a successful business idea. Charles says, “I can tell you from first hand experience, to continuously pivot, and not be able to stop is an awful feeling”. Charles pivoted 137 times before he realised that he had a problem. Even this realisation was thanks to an intervention by his girlfriend, Marjorie. When I was going through this awful period, there was no help or rehab options for pivoters. I had to do all the research myself, said Charles. I was trying to find a cure while suffering an addiction. What a lot of people don't realise is how addictive pivoting can be. It always starts off as, “Let us try this one different idea” and before you know it, you are pivoting every 2 days!
Today, Charles feels grateful, helping fellow pivoters pivot out of their addiction. It is a very careful 19 step process that I came up with, after a lot of trial, error and pivots. All I can say is that pivoting is a more common and widespread addiction than you think. If you know of a friend or family member who has it, or are suffering from it yourself, feel free to talk about it less. Talking about it makes the pivoting continue, because people are usually encouraging when you come up with new ideas. Today, in our retreat, we treat 100 pivoters every month. We have also launched an online rehab program. We also offer a return discount to our members as relapsing in this addiction is very common, says Charles.
Currently Charles is successful and happy with his “Dont Pivot” rehab company. He might move into chicken farming if that starts looking more lucrative. It is hard to tell, says Charles; or maybe he is relapsing himself.
