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HotMail (remember that?) started this way. The founders had an idea for a database hosted on the web(?), and pitched it to some VCs. They had been working on it as a side gig. Naturally, the VCs asked: did you do it on company time? Did you communicate via the company's email system? Nope, came the answer. We thought about that and built this email system to exchange messages while we worked on the product. And the V…
Brex went from virtual reality goggles -> corporate finance saas They basically started on the billing system for their VR and decided to pivot to that.
https://discord.fandom.com/wiki/Discord#:~:text=Advertisemen....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
If you add blank lines between you'll get them formatted more like what you probably want. Zimride to Lyft isn't much of a pivot, they're basically kinda the same thing.
That said, I'd say going from a SaaS model where you charge companies or universities $40k/year to access software that they provide free to students/workers is very different from a mobile app that does real-time dispatch / pickup inside a city and you charge the consumer directly. Different customer, different business model, different offering.
Warren Buffet turned a textile manufacturing company into a holding. An automatic loom manufacture got turned into one of the biggest automobile companies: Toyota Nokia was initially a pulp mill. Microsoft initially sold a BASIC interpreter, then a Unix, then MS-DOS.
Sharp started out making mechanical pencils. Panasonic started out making lightbulb sockets. Mitsubishi started as a shipping company.
Another is IBM which originally built analog census taking machines and cash registers, but "pivoted" into the emerging world of digital computers.
Polaroid originally started off with Edwin Land's invention of polarized lenses which he sold in large number to world war 2 aviators. The instant camera was a pet project which exploded in success.
Many people might be surprised to learn that Intel did not go whole hog into CPUs after the 4004 processor. Intel made most of its money selling memory for mainframe computers. The revolutionary 4004 CPU was designed for a japanese calculator company that didn't even put up the cash for the original order. It was the automated decision-making processes that Robert Noyce set up that made sure the 4004 continued to get funding once people started buying them, and it took a while to get out of the memory making business.
This isn't quite a pivot, but Tandy was originally a leathergoods company that acquired a massive stake in Radioshack. For several decades it was known for its microcomputers during the dawn of the personal computer era. Today the leathergoods branch still exists, but the computer branch does not. Another is IBM which originally built analog census taking machines and cash registers, but "pivoted" into the emerging w…