Chapter 8: Pivot or Preserve

Chapter 8: Pivot or Preserve

1. The Runaway: The true measure of runaway is how many pivots a startup has left: the number of opportunities it has to make a fundamental change to its business strategy.

2. Learning Milestones goal: The goal of creating learning milestones is not to make the decision easy; it is to make sure that there is relevant data in the room when it comes time to decide.

3. Vanity metrics prevents pivoting: Vanity metrics can allow entrepreneurs to form false conclusions and live in their own private reality. When an entrepreneur has an unclear hypothesis, it’s almost impossible to experience complete failure, and without failure there is usually no impetus to embark on the radical change a pivot requires.

4. The land of the living dead: Happens when a company has achieved a modicum of success – just enough to stay alive – but is not living up to the expectations of its founders and investors.

5. Pivot definition: A structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy and engine of growth.