The word pivot gets used loosely in startup culture, which can create confusion about what it actually means and when it is warranted. A pivot is a fundamental change to one or more core elements of your business strategy — your target customer, your product offering, your revenue model, or your distribution channel. It is not a small product update, a pricing adjustment, or a minor change in marketing messaging. Those are iterations. A pivot is more significant than that.

It is also important to understand that pivoting is not the same as abandoning your vision. Many of the most successful pivots in startup history involved companies that kept their core vision — solving a particular problem for a particular set of people — while fundamentally rethinking how they were going to achieve it. The vision stayed constant; the strategy changed. Holding onto that distinction helps founders navigate a pivot without feeling like they are betraying the purpose that drove them to start the company in the first place.

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