Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apologies in advance for the nitpick, but if you're just dropping your product and doing something else that's not really a pivot. Pivoting is more like changing your plan than throwing it out - targeting a different audience, changing your product plan based on feedback, that sort of thing.
I’d call changing the entire plan a “hard pivot.” I mean Slack started out as a video game (and Flickr - same game IIRC). But as the counter point, here’s an article that argues against doing that in favor of simply shutting down (including comments from a YC partner no less)! https://www.reforge.com/brief/why-hard-pivots-in-startups-ar... In this case though, the company is brand new. There aren’t a lot of employees…
I think it's always fair to criticise somebody's work - after all, starting a company is stepping into the public sphere. I don't know if what they're doing will be successful or not because I presume they've investigated the market more than I have. The proof is in the pudding though - we'll see in a few years if the idea was good or not!