Slack, MMO to Chat client is probably the most interesting and stark pivot
Slack? The chat app that everyone has very strongly held opinions on? that slack? It started as an MMO? I never knew this and have got to go read about it now, that IS an interesting pivot.
Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
21–30 of 204 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#22MtGox, the infamous Bitcoin exchange that handled over 70% of the Bitcoin trading volume of 2010 was originally "Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange", a site for trading magic cards in MtG: Online. I don't know if it's that wild of a pivot, trading one virtual object and then trading another, but magic cards sure seem more innocuous.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#23Slack, MMO to Chat client is probably the most interesting and stark pivot
Slack? The chat app that everyone has very strongly held opinions on? that slack? It started as an MMO? I never knew this and have got to go read about it now, that IS an interesting pivot.
IIRC some of the animated characters that show up with error messages are from the old game.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#24Slack, MMO to Chat client is probably the most interesting and stark pivot
Slack? The chat app that everyone has very strongly held opinions on? that slack? It started as an MMO? I never knew this and have got to go read about it now, that IS an interesting pivot.
More on that here: https://mashable.com/article/slack-glitch
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#25[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#26My friend Jason wrote this Tweet with 5 examples I don't think gets talked about much: https://twitter.com/JasonShen/status/1560680372463173637 Most notable one was probably Grubwithus (meet people over meals) -> GOAT (sneakers marketplace, valued at $3.7B)
Thanks Ricky! Yeah the 5 I wrote about are:
Zimride (college carpool) → Lyft Grubwithus (shared meals) → GOAT Meerkat (Twitter livestream) → Houseparty Fates Forever (iPad MOBA game) → Discord The Lobby (finance recruiting) → Nuvocargo
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#27This is a pretty decent list if you are interested in the concept and looking for examples. https://github.com/fikrikarim/companies-with-successful-pivo...
On this list, Nokia originally producing rubber is probably the funniest.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#28I really dislike these stories because virtually all these companies lose the script (no second act). It seems that companies that start with a larger vision have multiple acts. Microsoft with software going from programming tools to OS to office to cloud. Apple with computing going from computers to iPods, phones, and tablets. Google with organizing the worlds information and making it accessible. Perhaps it is survival bias or perhaps I am mistaken.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#29Slack, MMO to Chat client is probably the most interesting and stark pivot
Slack? The chat app that everyone has very strongly held opinions on? that slack? It started as an MMO? I never knew this and have got to go read about it now, that IS an interesting pivot.
Not even the first time that happened.
Stewart Butterfield previously tried to make a game that eventually became flickr.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#30Plaid was originally a budgeting app. After realizing how terrible banking APIs are, they pivoted to building a developer-friendly banking API. Now their valuation is 10B+.