How to Pivot Well

Slack started out as a video game studio. Instagram was an app for checking in to places. Twitter was intended to be a podcast directory. Today, these stories are the myth that every founder in crisis clings to, convinced that changing everything is all it takes to strike gold. But in the world of artificial intelligence, where the rules change every quarter and a company can reinvent itself from scratch in a few weeks, the art of knowing how to pivot is no longer a stroke of luck: it's a basic skill for those who found startups. The fundamental mistake? Thinking that pivoting means throwing everything away and starting over. In reality, the secret of a good pivot is to keep something steady: a relationship, the investors' funds, or – as Emily Bennett, a speedrun investor, says – everything you've learned. Emily says that the worst failure almost never comes from those who try to change, but from those who stubbornly insist on going in the wrong direction when it is now clear that it is not working. And Troy Kirwin, another investor on the team, adds a surprising detail: it is often the young, inexperienced founders who pivot best, because they have no dogmas to defend and can change course like missiles aimed at the heat of the market. Three recent stories prove this. Kareem Amin co-founded Clay to make programming accessible to everyone. After five years and almost zero revenue, they realized that the only truly active customers were the growth teams that used their spreadsheet to find sales leads. They changed everything and, in two years, went from certain failure to $30 million in recurring revenue, then more than $100 million. Anton Osika built Lovable after releasing an open-source tool that garnered fifty thousand stars on GitHub in two months — but the real breakthrough was realizing that most of the market didn't even know how to use a terminal. So he rebuilt the product for non-technical users and reached 100 million in revenue in eight months. Then there's Cursor: four founders who spent a year chasing the chimera of AI for technical drawing, but none of them was a mechanical engineer. When they stopped chasing a market that didn't represent them and went back to building for themselves — developers who want better tools — they finally found traction. The key question: when should you pivot? Emily warns against being blinded by love for your own idea, ignoring the lack of real demand. She says: "Sometimes founders convince themselves that the problem is that the market doesn't understand. More often, the problem is that you're the one who doesn't understand." Troy suggests a brutal test: "If in two weeks you can't find fifty customers willing to talk to you, or at least 15-20% accept, it's a sign: you're chasing after nothing." And beware of the trap of time already spent: the fear of having wasted months can block the desire to change, when in fact the best founders are those who seek the truth, not confirmation of their beliefs. And how do you do a pivot well? The basketball rule returns: one foot always planted, everything else can rotate. Emily says that every conversation you have and every piece of feedback you collect is not wasted time: even if you change direction, there is always a valid seed to carry over to the new project. Her method starts with ten people willing to talk in depth, then expands with quantitative tests to understand where there is real traction. Troy insists: the goal of the calls is not to sell, but to find out if the problem you think you're solving really exists. And today, with tools like Lovable that allow you to prototype in a day, there is no excuse for having to "finish the product" before testing the market. The paradox? Often the most difficult pivots are those of companies that are neither dead nor experiencing explosive growth. Emily makes it clear: there are excellent businesses that are not for venture capital. But the only real disaster is building a product for no one and burning through other people's money. And Troy closes with a confession: for an investor, hearing that a founder wants to pivot is not a sign of weakness, but proof that the team is moving fast and wants the truth more than its own excuses. In short, knowing how to pivot is not Silicon Valley magic: it is the ability to read the market, let go of the ego, and hold on to only the things that really matter. If this perspective on how to change course has impressed you, you can press I'm In on Lara Notes — it's not a like, it's your way of saying: this idea is now part of how you think about work. And when you tell someone the story of Clay, Lovable or Cursor, on Lara Notes you can mark that conversation with Shared Offline — because certain exchanges deserve to stay, not just online. This Note comes from an article by a16z speedrun and has saved you 4 minutes of reading.