Peugeot successively made :
- Wheat flour
- Steel
- Saws
- Coffee grinders
- Corsets
- Bicycles
- Cars
You can still buy Peugeot grinders and bicycles.
Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
171–180 of 204 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#172HotMail (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…
I wonder… why would an email system make their eyes light up? Must have been more to it than that
How well do you remember 4th July 1996? The internet was a very different place.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#173Not a startup obviously but the pivot of Berkshire Hathaway after Warren Buffet bought it is pretty incredible. Company started in textile manufacturing in the late 1800's, after buffet bought it he expanded the company until it became the conglomerate we know today.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#174Nokia was initially a single pulp mill around Tampere/Nokia region.
Nokia came to my mind as well. They made rubber products (galoshes, etc) before getting into telecom equipment in the late 70's and ultimately cell-phones in the 90's!
They still do make rubber products!
https://www.nokianfootwear.com/ https://www.nokiantyres.com/
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#175IBM and Microsoft?
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's fun to imagine what would happen if Stewart Butterfield was given the rights to Half-life 3...
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#177Lego was a carpentry. They pivoted to build wood bricks for children. There was a warehouse fire snd they pivoted to plastic bricks
Wow ! I think you got this completely reversed.
Lego _was_ a carpentry making wooden toys (not bricks, that concept came from another company: Kiddicraft toy company founded by Hilary Fisher Page). They acquired a very expensive plastic injection moulding machine. They spend several years working on the "Automatic Binding Brick" before nailing it down. By the time the wooden toy warehouse caught fire in the 1960s, the LEGO system was already -by far- the biggest selling product line of the company. Wooden toys were simply discontinued, not a pivot.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group/the-lego-group...
PS: Plastic toys were held in low regard when they started experimenting with it.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#178This 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…
> It was the automated decision-making processes that Robert Noyce set up that made sure the 4004 continued to get funding
Can you talk more about this?
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Between Discord and Slack, I think something SaaS companies need to consider is looking at play and how to genuinely integrate play / fun into how they develop product. Both of these huge companies spawned out of video games and I think we are going to see more spawn this way. I think play, especially at work, isn't discussed or considered enough and can form a strong core of a good product ("focus on the fun rather…
I vaguely remember Flickr early version being a turn by turn MMO ? Maybe MMORPG, not sure anymore. But to your point: a gaming venture.
Flickr was actually created by the same person that created Slack, and it both cases it was a pivot from a failed MMO/MMORPG.
Re: Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
#180Many of these follow a pattern. Try to build X fail Build one of the shovels you needed to build X succeed!
I think Unity falls into this camp.