
YouTube started as an online dating site with the idea people would upload videos to introduce themselves, but dropped the idea a few days later in favor of its “Broadcast Yourself” vision. Many of the most famous companies had a pivot along the way, big or small.“In reality, pivots are an integral part of the entrepreneurial process.” “The myth about pivots is that they are an exception: something undesirable that happens because a startup went seriously awry, and which you should strive to avoid,” Greylock’s Reid Hoffman once wrote. The secret to most startups is that they will have to change directions at one point or another.
#Bear writer angellist software
Interior design startup Modsy tried switching to a software service for designers, but that never made it out of beta - the company shut down last month. Pivoting in a bear market is even harder, but many companies need to in order to put themselves in a position that’s “undeniably fundable.” More startups are launching SaaS offerings to try to capture recurring revenue, but it doesn’t always work.Clubhouse’s pivot is moving to smaller, private communities called “Houses.” “A single community just doesn’t work beyond a certain size,” he conceded. He realized Clubhouse had gotten too big: At a certain point, larger social circles always splinter into smaller ones. "Whoops," co-founder Paul Davison tweeted. “We tried to limit signups by requiring an existing member to invite you, but that perversely made people want to join more and flooded the hallway with less relevant rooms. Clubhouse found itself in a similar situation when it let everyone onto the audio chat network.A changing macro environment, which brings more discipline to the process of exploring product-market fit, could be to blame.

Stonks isn’t the only startup switching strategies right now. “You can either accept reality, and the data, and what the community is telling us, or we can go out of business.” “It was tough to make a change that seems at odds with our mission, but those are the realities on the ground,” Moiz said. Last week, Moiz announced Stonks was switching strategies and taking its demo days private, roping off its network only to vetted investors.So far, $100 million has been wired to startups that made use of Stonks - a milestone Moiz is proud of - but it’s far short of the $800 million investors indicated to founders via Stonks that they would provide. Founders complained of getting spammed by service firms and ghosted by investors. For Moiz, this wasn't just “wishy-washy feelings” that Stonks needed to change direction, he told me.

Stonks faced a realization many startups do: You have to change strategies, or die. Ten months later, with more founder complaints mounting, that problem under the rug was too big for Moiz to ignore.


“So as many founders do when faced with an intractable problem, I shoved it under the rug,” Moiz wrote. The catchy tagline for Stonks: “like Twitch + AngelList + SharkTank had a 👶.”īut even on that first day, a founder pulled him aside and confessed they didn’t actually like pitching in public. He wanted to build a startup that would help investors from anywhere invest in great startup deals, not just those lucky enough to make it into YC’s hallowed halls. Ali Moiz could tell from the very first event his demo-day site Stonks hosted that something was off.
