It takes vigilance: How to spot your big chance to pivot

We’ve all heard the statistic: 90 percent of startups will fail. And a big reason why is that they don’t recognize and realize the need to change — whether that’s a partial or a complete transformation. The power of the pivot can make the difference between a company being in that 90 percent or in the 10 percent that succeed.

Today’s landscape is only getting tougher for startups. Venture capitalists are getting leaner and meaner. Funding for startups fell 25 percent from the fourth quarter, according to VentureSource, marking the largest quarterly decline since the dot-com bust. Tighter funding environments make it all the more critical that startups see their pivot potential.

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I’ve pivoted many times in my career. First with WebMD, then with N2 Broadband, and finally with Vitrue, which was acquired by Oracle in 2012. Throughout those experiences, I relied on six key strategies and tactics to help identify the need to change and embrace the pivot. Here they are:

1. Empower your people. Your employees are your best assets. Empower and inspire them to innovate, ask questions, and challenge you. As Steve Case wrote in his book The Third Wave, “…get employees to pay more regular focused attention to what is happening around the edges of your industry, with an eye toward what may happen next. It’s about lifting up the people in your company who are seeing around the corners, and giving them the support — both emotional and financial — to innovate.” He is so right on. At Vitrue, innovations came from every level of the organization, and we created an atmosphere that fostered that belief. Flatten your organization and empower people.

2. Be curious. Always be curious. Never stop asking questions. Read everything. Curiosity can give your startup life and help you recognize the pivot. In the book Curious, author Ian Leslie argues that true curiosity is in decline — to our detriment. Remember Albert Einstein’s famous quote: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” Promote curiosity across your organization.

3. Be bold. It’ll take bold innovation for your startup to flourish. The next five to 10 years promise to see revolutionary innovations that will be the catalyst for new business ideas, but the successful ones will be those who are bold. At all three startups in my career, boldness was a crucial ingredient for making and embracing pivots, and it paid off.

4. Be tenacious. Change isn’t easy, and making pivots is tough stuff. You need determination and unrelenting tenacity. Steve Jobs summed it up well when he said, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” At WebMD, we had the tall task of creating a digital brand that stands for trust between doctors and patients — a digital first. It took a tenacious focus to believe we could pull it off, and believe me, we relied on tenacity to persevere. Since then, WebMD has been ranked as the most trusted consumer brand in the U.S. by Millward Brown and attracts tens of millions unique users per month.

5. Prioritize partnerships. This seems like a no-brainer but is crucially important. It’s not enough to go it alone with your technology — you need a network of partnerships to succeed. At Vitrue a priority on partnerships was key. It’s what made us one of Facebook’s first preferred developers. And our partnership with our customers, particularly Apple and P&G, allowed us to co-innovate and co-develop a better product that benefitted us both. This next technology revolution will transform entire industries – from healthcare to education to government – and will require cross-industry partnerships to build credibility and support momentum.

6. Follow the data. Entrepreneurs often can’t see where they need to change — even if the data proves it. Our tenacity and passion can blind us to the truth. But we must always measure and follow the data. Steve Jobs famously said, “A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” But for every iPhone, there are countless products in the technology dumpster. At Vitrue we pivoted from a user-generated video platform to a social relationship management (SRM) platform because we followed the social media data. We believed social would explode in growth and transform how people get their information and communicate forever. And the data backed it up. Follow the data – measure everything – and be realistic with the results.

Look around and you see signs of the pivot everywhere. According to The Innovation Ambition Matrix, these changes can be “core,” “adjacent,” or “transformational.” Instagram launching Instagram Stories to keep pace with competition and consumer usage — that’s core. Amazon’s development of a fleet of jets for its own freight network — that’s adjacent. And applications like Uber that are breakthroughs and give birth to new markets — that’s transformational.

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Some of the greatest companies made dramatic pivots before they found success. Did you know YouTube launched as a video dating website? Twitter was once a podcasting network, and they are still pivoting today. And Nintendo manufactured playing cards before pivoting to gaming in 1977.

So empower your people. Be curious. Be bold. Be tenacious. Place a priority on partnerships. Always follow the data. And look around corners for your next pivot. After all, aren’t we all on a continual pivot to improve?

Reggie Bradford has led multiple startups, including WebMD, N2 Broadband, and Vitrue. He currently serves as senior vice president of product development at Oracle where he drives Oracle’s cloud strategy while continuing to support entrepreneurism and innovation through programs such as the Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator program.