The Pivot Pyramid

A guideline to come up with and

experiment on your startup idea

Selcuk Atliselcuk@500startups.com

• Over 1500 Companies Invested In• $240M Under Management• 300+ companies started outside US• 300+ companies with Women Founders• Our Team of 110 people spans 12 countries

and speak 20+ different languages

Always #500strong

• Venture Partner, 500 Startups• Co-founder, Manifest (acq. Rakuten)• Co-founder, Boostable (YC W’14)• Sell out rock star with upcoming EP

Twitter @selcukatli

Personal Pivot Story:Manifest Commerce

Searching forProduct Market Fit

Many Small Experiments

Growth HackingThesis >> Experiment >>Measure >> Scale

???

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

Pivot Pyramid

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

e.g. Shopify

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

e.g. Criteo

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

e.g. Meerkat

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

e.g. Facebook

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

e.g. Airbnb

Key Takeaways

EXPERIMENTLESS FREQUENTLY

Pivoting at the bottomChanges everything above

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

Start with customers. Not product, or technology.

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

You can’t have more than one customer

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

Assume you willdump your technology

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

All experimentsmust target GROWTH

Customers

Problem

Solution

Tech

Growth

selcuk@500startups.com

#PivotPyramid

Growth Airbnb Airbnb started posting their listings on craigslist. This boosted visibility of listings and drove more demand. It was short lived because Craigslist shut it down.

Technology Facebook When its original programming language PHP started not keeping up with its scale, Facebook built HipHop, a technology that translated PHP into C++, a more scalable and efficient language.

Solution Meerkat Originally an app that lets you share live video with people you know, Meerkat achieved breakout growth when it started live streaming video on Twitter.

Problem Criteo Criteo started out as a recommendation engine for online retailers. They pivoted to become one of the most successful companies that help online retailers execute retargeting campaigns.

Customers Shopify Tobias Lütke started out by selling an elite line of snowboards online. He quickly realized the tools to help build ecommerce sites were not good enough. Today Shopify helps 100,000+ SMBs sell their products online.