SBenegaL

Tag: #pivots

  • Many pivots?

    Pivots have joined the vocabulary of entrepreneurship thanks to Steve Blank and Eric Ries. It has become so prevalent that when you ask any entrepreneur who isn’t making much progress, you get a response – “I am making a pivot.” The question that immediately comes to our mind is, why are you pivoting so many times!

    Pivots simply refer to changes in a strategic component of the venture building, guided by a goal. If one is changing the goal so many times, then are you at all making any progress, or are you simply confused? To understand the concept of pivot better, it is important to understand the lean start-up process beginning with the venture idea.

    An entrepreneur beginning with an idea should first acknowledge that there are many underlying assumptions made. You begin with testing these assumptions (which otherwise would weaken the foundation). The testing of assumptions requires an appropriate formulation of the hypothesis. A hypothesis that can be empirically tested through experiments. 

    The empirical testing begins with designing the experiments. Most often, entrepreneurs skip this critical step of experimental design. If you are not designing an experiment, you really cannot make causal inferences by running the experiment. You need to be pretty sure what the variation is before you can run with it and make a claim about the validity of a hypothesis. Testing the hypothesis takes the form of a version of the MVP (more on it later), which is then experimented to gather the outcomes. Based on this experiment’s outcomes, you infer if the assumption was accurate and realistic or just plain fiction. If the assumptions are inaccurate or fictitious, you must re evaluate the component of the idea and make amends. This amendment is what we refer to as pivots. If the assumption withstood the experimental test, you move ahead and persevere on the idea and build your venture.

    So next time you are claiming to be amid a pivot, ask if you have really tested your assumption and thus seek a change in the strategy to build the venture.

    Ask yourself:

    Have I identified the underlying assumption of my venture idea?

    What is a good experiment to test this assumption? It need not necessarily be building your MVP!

    What do the results of the experiment imply? Is the assumption invalid and, therefore, requiring a pivot, or am I simply fooling the world claiming to be in a pivoting mode all the time?

  • Passionate and headstrong or flexible with pivots

    Most inspirational stories about entrepreneurs go back to showing their struggle against all the odds, the victory of a passionate individual who overcomes all odds to build the venture of their dream. We could simply think – This is such a great motivation, isn’t it? In our story, too, we see the struggle, we see hardships, I am sure if we can stick passionately, be headstrong at building the venture, we would be successful!

    At the other end, walk into a bookstore and ask for books on the lean startup. Or go to the internet and check out lean. You will find that the underlying value portrayed is completely different. Be flexible, learn from the market. Make experiments fail quickly, learn, and improve. Here we see flexibility to be the dominant message.

    If we take these two pointers together, it is but logical to ask – should I be passionate, or should I be flexible? What will guarantee success for me?

    The answer lies in understanding that both these are perspectives of the entrepreneurial journey. For those who begin questioning the delays in realizing their goals, being passionate is the answer. For those struggling to find the route, staying flexible and listening to the market is the answer.

    This does not give the complete picture yet. Passion allows you to invest the energies, handle the uncertain outcomes, and keep the efforts moving. However, the same passion could blind the individual as well as the team into believing blindly what they want to believe. Entrepreneurship is not about building something that only you want to build; it requires you to develop and sell the product, which means that someone outside the team should agree to the value that is being developed and then buy.

    If whatever you are building may end up not being valuable to anyone, what is the use of the passion? Listening to the realities as perceived by the market, out there, becomes necessary to develop the venture from the idea.

    More importantly, strike a balance in your approach – don’t be over passionate and thus deaf to the realities that the potential market is telling you.

    Ask yourself:

    Do I feel inspired by my work? Would I love to spend months without a result to get this venture to be sustainable?

    Am I listening to market reality? Does it differ from my firmly held beliefs? Should I question my beliefs with the new information I reach?

    Is there an alternate way to what I hold so closely and strongly? What is it that I am fighting for – building a business that is valuable or building something the way I see it?