Lean Startup Chapter 8: Pivot slides |

Take Aways from Chapter 8 - Pivot

• Big Idea: The Pivot, Abandoning a key hypotheses and chart a new course

• Pivoting is not a scientific decision, it’s a judgement call
• However that judgement should be informed by data
• Pivot faster is the key metric
• Number of pivots left in runway
• A pivot is not a failure

Discussion Questions for Chapter 8

• Is a pivot a ‘failure’?
  • Why did pivoting not hurt so much when we did it in these projects?
  • Why would they hurt a lot more for a company like Votizen?s
• Types of Pivot - which kinds happened to you all?
  • Zoom-in pivot: Subset of product is what matters
  • Zoom-out pivot: Product is too narrow - generalize it
  • Customer segment pivot: Product solves a real problem but there’s a different much bigger market.
  • Customer need pivot: Market has strong needs, but the problem we are solving is not the biggest
  • Platform pivot: Go from a point product to a platform, or vice versa.
  • Business model pivot: from low cost high volume to high cost low volume
  • Value capture pivot: basic change in how the business is financed
  • Channel Pivot: Change in how you get product to customer. Change from a product to a service.
  • Technology Pivot: Change in core technology
• Whats the point of enumerating all the kinds of pivot?
• How is Votizen doing now?
• What were their original set of four leaps of faith?
  • Register -> Activate -> Retain -> Refer
  • How would you measure the effectiveness of the MVP and the stages?
  • How does “cohort analysis” apply here?
• How would this work for a hardware product?
• What tuning did they do before they pivoted? What did they try?
• Causes acquired Votizen. What do you think Votizen’s biggest asset was?
  • Do some classroom research
  • blog.causes.com—causes-acquires-votizen
• Was Votizen a success or not?
  • online.wsj.com—SB10001424052970203960804577242173304348722.html
• How many pivots can be done in remaining runway
  • What is “runway”?
  • Why does it matter?
• Talk about Path
  • What was a key hypothesis?
  • How might they have judged whether they were succeeding or needed to pivot?
• Talk about Wealthfront
  • What was the original leap of faith hypothesis?
    • Model portfolio “game” to discover talented money managers
    • Platform to let clients invest with those great money managers
  • How did it go?
    • Many signups, not many great managers
    • Pivot
      • What to pivot to is a very hard question
      • Informed by qualitative findings from all the research being done.
      • A platform for professional money managers
      • A tool to allow clients to evaluate who they wanted.
      • Even though signups were high (vanity metrics) the basic hypotheses were not being confirmed
• IMVU
  • Do you see how they could have record numbers of new users and paying users and still not on a path to success?
    • Vanity metrics
    • Engine of growth
    • Change of markets
  • Decision to pivot here is very confusing
    • Even once you realize the problem
    • Not at all clear what to do about it/