List of startups/companies that had successful pivots

Company	Now	Early days	Reason for pivot	Source
WhatsApp	Messaging app	App that would show statuses for other people like "On the flight to Munich, send email instead of calling me."	Users started using it to ping each other with statuses like, “I woke up late,” or “I’m on my way.” At some point it sort of became instant messaging.	source
Youtube	Video-sharing platform	Dating website for single people to make videos introducing themselves and saying what they were looking	Despite offering to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to YouTube, nobody came forward. So they decided to remove the "dating" part and allow all types of videos.	source
Slack	Instant messaging platform	Browser-based massively multiplayer online game called Glitch.	"Glitch has not attracted an audience large enough to sustain itself." The next best idea they had was to productize and market an internal communications tool that they had built to run Glitch.	source
Instagram	Photo-sharing social network	A mobile app called Burbn that let you: check in to locations, make plans, earn points, post pictures, and much more.	They wanted to focus on being really good at one thing. So they basically cut everything in the Burbn app except for its photo, comment, and like capabilities	source
Twitter	Microblogging service	Podcasting platform called Odeo.	Apple released iTunes that took all the podcasting market. Odeo realized the danger, and they started holding official hackathons to search for new products; one of them became Twitter.	source
Shopify	eCommerce platform	Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment.	Dissatisfied with the existing e-commerce products on the market, Lütke, instead built his own.	source
Netflix	Streaming service	Online DVD rental store sent by mail.	Netflix had considered offering movies online, but there were speeds and bandwith problem in mid-2000. After discovering YouTube, and witnessing how popular streaming services, they introduced video on demand via internet.	source
Yelp	Places recommendation service	Email-based referral network to ask friends for place recommendation.	Users were not answering requests for referrals, but were using the "Real Reviews" feature, which allowed them to write reviews unsolicited.	source
Nintendo	Video game company	Playing card company.	Nintendo experimented in other areas of business like: taxi company, hotel chain, TV network, instant rice; but none of them were succesful. Then they tried to focus on video games.	source
Paypal	Online payment system	Mobile encryption service -> Payment between PDA -> Web payment	For the encryption service, they didn't want to be dependent on others to build application. For the PDA payment, not everyone had a PDA.	source
Zipline	Drone delivery company	Romo, an iPhone-powered robotic pet	CEO decided to seek a product that would have a greater social impact. Soon they were scouring the developing world to learn how drone-based logistics could help save lives.	source
Flickr	Photo sharing community	Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called Neverending	They focused on a photo-sharing feature developed for Neverending. In the early days, no one knew how to store the pictures they took. Most photo sites were more about uploading your pictures in hope you would pay to have them printed.	source
Groupon	Online deal marketplace	The Point, a web platform based on the "tipping point" principle that would utilize social media to get people together to accomplish a goal.	The Point was intended to organize people around some sort of cause or goal. It gained only modest traction in Chicago until a group of users decided their cause would be saving money. They wanted to round up people to buy the same product in order to receive a group discount.	source
Nokia	Mobile phone and tech	Producing rubber	Invented a lot and diverse range of products	source
Play-Doh	Toys for kids	Wall cleaner	The market for wallpaper cleaning putty decreased substantially. They had seen a newspaper article about making art projects with the wallpaper cleaning putty, and the students enjoyed it.	source
Western Union	International money transfer	One of the largest telegram service company	Decline of telegraphy	source
Android	Operating system for mobile phone	Operating system for digital cameras	The company then decided that the market for cameras was not large enough for its goals	source
BioWare	Video game company	Medical simulation program	The founders relaxed by playing computer games and they realized that this was where their passion was. The medical field was satisfying and lucrative, but it was time for the group to move on.	source
Segment	Customer Data Platform	Classroom lecture tool	When the product was deployed in the classroom, all the students opened their laptop and went straight to Facebook instead of using the program.	source
ARM	Designing computer processors	Acorn Computers Ltd., producers of computer systems originally designed to run slot machines and other computers	They need powerful CPU. After approaching Intel for the 80286 core and being rebuffed, Acorn decided to develop their own processor.	source
Twitch	Live streaming service	Justin.TV, where Justin Kan, one of the co-founder, wore a camera on his head and livestreamed his life 24/7	It never really took off and they were running out of runway. Then they noticed that the one area growing faster than any other was videogame streaming, and rebuilt the whole company around that.	source
Berkshire Hathaway	Conglomerate holding company	Textile manufacturing company	Warren Buffet bought a controlling interest in the company and fired Stanton, who run the company previously. Buffet then started to pivot from the failing textile business by acquiring a couple of insurance companies (including GEICO).	source
Microsoft	Operating system and office suite	Traf-O-Data, whose objective was to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers	The company had only modest success but the experience was instrumental in the creation of Microsoft Corporation a few years later.	source
Toyota	Automobile manufacturer	Manufactured automatic looms, device used to weave cloth and tapestry.	Son inherited the business and wanted to establish success independent of his father's, and believed the automobile industry would grow. He sold the loom patents to raise capital.	source
Mazda	Automobile manufacturer	Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., cork-making factory.	Bankruptcy. They needed a pivot so they restarted as car manufacturer in 1931 introducing a motorized rickshaw.	source
Mentor Graphics	EDA and CAD Software	Sold turn-key CAD workstations (i.e. pre-installed EDA and CAD software, pre-configured network, on Apollo (Unix-like) workstations.	Selling workstations with pre-installed software made sense in 1980s because often customers had no other computers and no LAN. New competitors sold just software and thus had lower overhead. Customers got more sophisticated they didn't need managed workstations.	source
Okta	Identity Management	SaaSure, focused on monitoring and reporting on the reliability of cloud services	Todd, the co-founder, showed SaaSure to 100 people and the customers kept asking about identity. So he listened and pivoted the company.	source
Audible	Audiobook and podcast service	Audible Player, portable media player released in 1998	Hardware is hard - they had trouble competing with other companies who simply did hardware better (e.g. Apple). So they instead licensed audio codec technology and focused on developing content.	source
Pixar	Computer Animated Movies	Selling Pixar Image Computer, hardware for computer animation	Insufficient sales of hardware product.	source
American Express	Credit cards, banking, finances.	Package delivery service, mostly employing "Expressmen" who carried packages on trains from one city to another.	They were accused of anticompetitive behaviour. Then the government stripped the Express side of the business. Luckily, they had invented the travelers cheque and money order by then, so they pivoted into becoming mainly a financial services business rather than logistics.	source
IBM	IT services, cloud, software	Sell physical, punch card based tabulating machines.	Invention of computers.	source
Polaroid	Instant cameras	Polarized lenses and optics for the armed forces.	In a vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico with his three-year-old eldest daughter, Jennifer, he took a picture of her. She asked why she could not see the picture her father just took of her, within an hour, he already had the idea for the SX-70 Polaroid camera.	source
Radioshack	Electronics and leather goods	Leather goods	Tandy originally made leather goods for the hobby market. As electronics grew as a hobby in the 70s and 80s, Tandy acquired a small, failing electronics store in Boston called Radioshack. In 2000, the Tandy name was dropped and the entity became the RadioShack Corporation.	source
Upstart	Direct to consumer lending	Allow people to sell their future earnings for cash today or Income Sharing Agreement, "Kickstarter for people."	"This income sharing thing we thought would take off like crazy just wasn't taking off." But the launch of the loan product made the path forward clear. "The interest and volume of that was so dramatic, that three days later, we end-of-lifed the ISA product."	source
Soylent	Meal replacement, nutrition.	Inexpensive cell phone towers.	Cell phone towers were too hard to break into, the founders ran out of money, but still had to eat. So they played around with a meal replacement formula, and invented "Soylent".	source
IMG.LY	Providing SDKs for image processing	Originally started as a social image sharing site for Twitter (until Twitter decided to do it themself)	While running a dying service they started licensing their image processing algorithms and eventually pivoted to a successfull SDK business	source
Branch	Mobile deep links and measurement	Kindred Photo Books, a mobile app for creating physical photo books.	Technical challenges made non-ad growth marketing extremely difficult for mobile apps. The founders realized that all app developers faced a similar problem, and packaged their homegrown deep linking and measurement tools into a new product.	source
elvah	Sustainable mobility	Software agency with customers in Media, Sports and Travel	As customers dropped out due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team was faced with the choice to either shut down the business or to pivot to a product company, allowing them to work on something that was dear to their hearts.	source, source

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