Pivot

A pivot is a deliberate change of direction that keeps one thing learned and replaces another that isn't working. You might keep the customer but change the product, keep the product but change the customer, or keep the technology and rebuild the use case around it. The key word is deliberate: a pivot is a structured bet made on evidence, not a panicked lurch every time a week goes badly. For a lean founder, the value of a pivot is that it preserves the months of insight you've already paid for while cutting the part that's dead. The hard part is honesty about which part that is. Most founders pivot too late, clinging to a thesis the market keeps rejecting, because admitting the core idea was wrong feels like failure. It isn't. A clean pivot off real signal is one of the strongest moves a small company can make.