One of the most useful books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading was the “The Lean Startup “, by Eric Reiss. In the book, the main idea that Reiss expresses is that success of most startups depend on how well and how fast they can “pivot” in their evolution. Reiss’s book has been one of those business books that has come out in the last decade which has really changed the way many businesses and owners think about how the startup should work.
From the Wikipedia article on “The Lean Startup“…
- The Lean Startup relies on validated learning, scientific experimentation, and iterative product releases to shorten product development cycles, measure progress, and gain valuable customer feedback.[1][2][4] In this way, companies, especially startups, can design their products or services to meet the demands of their customer base without requiring large amounts of initial funding or expensive product launches
- The lean startup philosophy is based on lean manufacturing, the streamlined production philosophy developed in the 1980s by Japanese auto manufacturers.[13] The lean manufacturing system considers as waste the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer, and thus a target for elimination
- Ries’ lean startup philosophy seeks to eliminate wasteful practices and increase value producing practices during the product development phase so that startups can have better chances of success without requiring large amounts of outside funding, elaborate business plans, or the perfect product.
- Continuous deployment is a process “whereby all code that is written for an application is immediately deployed into production,” which results in a reduction of cycle times
- A pivot is a “structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.
These are the basic ideas behind the philosophy. When I read the book, the main thing I took away from the work was this.
- Focus on getting the product (article or post) out to the readers public as fast as possible and reduce the amount of time in trying to make them perfect.
- Get feedback from the readers on how they like the material I produce and adapt the material from their behavior and feedback.
- Move as quickly as possible, by changing the business operations, making the neccesary mistakes, correct them quickly, and then moving forward through continuous changes which allow the business or project to morph/ evolve as time moves forward. (ie “PIVOT”)
From this FORBES article by Martin Zwilling, we see that there are multiple types of “Pivots”. he says there are ten types for business.
Pivots come in many different flavors, each designed to test the viability of a different hypothesis about the product, business model, and engine of growth. I agree with Eric’s summary of the top ten types of pivots to consider:
- Zoom-in pivot. In this case, what previously was considered a single feature in a product becomes the whole product. This highlights the value of “focus” and “minimum viable product” (MVP), delivered quickly and efficiently.
- Zoom-out pivot. In the reverse situation, sometimes a single feature is insufficient to support a customer set. In this type of pivot, what was considered the whole product becomes a single feature of a much larger product.
- Customer segment pivot. Your product may attract real customers, but not the ones in the original vision. In other words, it solves a real problem, but needs to be positioned for a more appreciative segment, and optimized for that segment.
- Customer need pivot. Early customer feedback indicates that the problem solved is not very important, or money isn’t available to buy. This requires repositioning, or a completely new product, to find a problem worth solving.
- Platform pivot. This refers to a change from an application to a platform, or vice versa. Many founders envision their solution as a platform for future products, but don’t have a single killer application just yet. Most customers buy solutions, not platforms.
- Business architecture pivot. Geoffrey Moore, many years ago, observed that there are two major business architectures: high margin, low volume (complex systems model), or low margin, high volume (volume operations model). You can’t do both at the same time.
- Value capture pivot. This refers to the monetization or revenue model. Changes to the way a startup captures value can have far-reaching consequences for business, product, and marketing strategies. The “free” model doesn’t capture much value.
- Engine of growth pivot. Most startups these days use one of three primary growth engines: the viral, sticky, and paid growth models. Picking the right model can dramatically affect the speed and profitability of growth.
- Channel pivot. In sales terminology, the mechanism by which a company delivers it product to customers is called the sales channel or distribution channel. Channel pivots usually require unique pricing, feature, and competitive positioning adjustments.
- Technology pivot. Sometimes a startup discovers a way to achieve the same solution by using a completely different technology. This is most relevant if the new technology can provide superior price and/or performance to improve competitive posture.
From a first glance by a person who is not running their own startup, this list of ideas will seem very distant from what they are doing and they will have trouble understanding what even the terms mean.
However, the main point is that I am trying to treat this website as a business in some ways and will pivot, iterate, make mistakes, and correct in the cycle of production of content to morph this website into something amazing. There is changes going on with this website EVERYDAY, and a lot of it is in the backend where you as the reader never see about 60% of the work being done.
I may be one person but I move fast and change fast. Behaviors, appearances, and habits are adapted for effectiveness and I try the hardes to implement as many of the 10 pivots for my projects and business as possible. For the readers, this post is to re-iterate my dedication that this website will be changing and improving on a daily rate which new, and more exciting things going on each day. Waste will be kept to a minimum, content production will be maximized, speed will be increased, and operations will be streamlined.