Last week, my partner Yaw Aning and I were preparing information to file our taxes. Like an old couple that’s been married so long they hardly notice the passing of time, we suddenly realized that very day was our one year anniversary for forming Pocket Tales.
(I’ll pause for gratuitous congratulations)
I didn’t attach any significance to the anniversary until I read a startup failure story about EventVue and how they tried a number of product “pivots” in an attempt to save their dying business.
In this scenario it sounds bad. It sounds like pivoting is a characteristic of failure - but that assumption is wrong.
Fred Wilson, the legendary VC blogger, once noted that 2/3 of the successful companies he’s invested in, had to make a hard pivot some time in their rise to success. Even EventVue says their mistakes included not pivoting sooner and not fully committing to the pivot.
And that story about EventVue is what reminded about something I’ve tried to sweep under the Pocket Tales rug. It suddenly gave a significance to the anniversary. Pocket Tales has pivoted 4 times in one year.
For those who don’t know, I’ll recount them for you:
December 2008 - We form “pocket tales” at Indianapolis Startup Weekend as a children’s eBook iPhone app. The only money spent is on a domain name.
February 2009 - We become “Pockettales” and try to sell a service helping self-published authors convert their printed books into iPhone apps. We spend half of our startup budget (roughly $10K) on development. With our connections at Author Solutions we think we have a quick path to making significant money.
August 2009 - Although Author Solutions says they’re definitely going to do something with the iPhone in the 4th quarter, we decide that the idea isn’t big enough to wait that long (our 20’s are fleeting). We decide to go after something bigger and more worth our time - creating a children’s ebook platform. We are bolstered by the positive response we receive at SproutBox. The old direction goes to http://www.booktoapp.com to die.
November 2009 - “Pocket Tales” has a severe identity crisis and it goes beyond how we capitalize and space the words. What are we? Are we selling eBooks? Are we a recommendation engine? Are we a reading game? We decide we’re all of them and start designing mockups. We spend a significant portion of our remaining budget.
January 2010 - We learn that the game aspect of our application is way more compelling than we thought. Teachers, parents, and kids all seem to love it. At the same time, they’re none too excited about eBooks, which is fine, because selling eBooks is riddled with obstacles (digital rights licensing anyone?) and building a game is fun. (I still believe one day we’ll sell eBooks)
Pivoting doesn’t mean we’re going to be successful, but if you remember the majority of successful startups pivot, which means pivoting is a valuable skill for any startup founder to have. If you look at the history of Pocket Tales, I think it’s hard to argue that we haven’t learned to pivot or that we’re incapable of fully committing to even a drastic change in the right direction. (Just don’t call us “flakey”)
One of my favorite short stories is “Porcelain and Pink” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story starts out with an introduction and a phrase I’ve memorized for some reason “Mistaken identity is the old rusty pivot upon which the plot turns.” I guess I memorized it because it gave me a less cliche way of referring to a cliche.
One of the greatest cliches in the life of startups is startups pivot. Next time you feel like the world is asking you to do the impossible and predict your startup’s future (like how much money you’re going to need to raise in 24 months), give them your best answer, and then focus more of your energy on convincing them of your ability to pivot.
Most smart people will trust that more than your ability to predict how many employees you’ll need two years from now for a business that isn’t even making money yet.
