Announcing a pivot is one of the more uncomfortable moments in a company’s life, largely because of how it tends to be read from the outside. Investors, press, and former users often interpret a pivot as an admission that the original idea failed. Founders who go through a well-timed pivot frequently describe the internal experience very differently — closer to relief at finally acting on evidence the team had been quietly accumulating for months.
The pivot that looks like failure from the outside
A well-timed pivot often gets read publicly as a company admitting defeat. Internally, it frequently looks like the opposite: a team finally facing reality.
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