Pivoting, as a concept, is great – identify earlier that something isn’t working, and then change course. But a big issue with pivoting is that you lose time. A LOT of time.
Towards the end of last year, I realised that I needed to pivot my business. What I didn’t realise at the time was that although I could easily see where I needed to get to, it would take SIX MONTHS to work out how to get there, and another THREE MONTHS after figuring out how to get there to start to see forward motion again. How does a project get to be a year late? “One week at a time.”
One issue I had is that I did not have the cash to pay someone to advise me, so I had to spend six months at “pivot university” rather than just paying someone who had “already graduated with honours”.
This is something that founders can have a bit of a blind spot on. Time – macro time, e.g. losing half a year or a year – is irreplaceable, but can be solved by paying for advice.