A Pivot in Life, A Few Pivots in Work!
The Art of the Pivot, in Work and Life
When you are building a startup, there are few certainties — you don’t always know where your next customer will come from, whether or not you will outgrow your office within a year or whether the last pitch you gave was received well by investors. One of the few things you do know for sure, is that there will be change, learning and challenges, and at one point or another — you are likely to pivot.
Pivoting is, in short, adjusting your product and strategy to better fit the market based on what you have learned. And this has proven to be an indispensable part of an entrepreneur’s life. But sometimes, an entrepreneur may be forced to pivot in more ways than one — pivoting their entire life instead of just the product, team or target market in order to achieve their goals.
Saba Mohebpour is the CEO of Spocket, one of 7 Gate’s portfolio companies which provides automated dropshipping management, allowing e-commerce vendors to expand their available goods to include third party merchandise, while also enabling suppliers to scale their distribution efficiently. The company is growing and was selected by TechStars as one of the top 10 companies in the Pacific Northwest ecosystem.
But it’s taken hard work and passion to get to this point, as with most “overnight successes,” they almost never happen overnight. Saba was born and raised in the beautiful city of Shiraz in Iran. He left his home country to immigrate to Canada and initially planned to pursue a career in medicine. He was promptly accepted to the University of British Columbia’s pre-med undergraduate program. However, after completing the program he hit a roadblock — he would have to wait to obtain his permanent residence in Canada before continuing on his path to become a doctor. So — it was time to pivot. He decided to start teaching himself programming and iOS development, and had no idea where these skills would take him. The determination to find a new path when faced with disappointment is a key attribute of nearly all successful entrepreneurs; on the startup path there will be challenges, roadblocks and failures and it is key to be able to just keep going.
With his new computer skills, Saba decided to build an e-commerce store and he started selling handmade iPhone cases. However, he soon hit yet another roadblock and discovered that sourcing inventory and managing its sale while relying on third party suppliers to drop-ship, came with yet a new set of problems. While this structure is an effective way to remove the burden of carrying inventory, it was terribly inefficient process-wise. Every order had to be managed, invoiced and shipped manually, one by one. And both he and his suppliers were struggling with the arrangement.
But, Saba’s instinct is sharp and his determination to solve problems unrelenting, so instead of giving up — you guessed it, it was time to pivot. He realized that he could create a tool to manage this process, and sell that tool to others struggling to build successful e-commerce businesses.
The best entrepreneurs are on a mission to solve problems, we identified this in Saba very quickly. But when we were first introduced — Saba was not even looking for investors, in fact, he did not even realize that he could take on investors to grow his business. So we sat down several times, I introduced him to others in the 7 Gate team as well and we worked together to discuss strategy for Spocket. After many discussions, we decided to lead the company’s seed round.
What we saw in Saba was a visionary and driven entrepreneur with the ability to inspire and lead a team to grow Spocket beyond a small Startup. Spocket has also called the 7 Gate Ventures Hub their home since 2016. This has allowed for a truly intimate and organic relationship between the founder and the investment team. Through biweekly brainstorming and strategy sessions the team has been able to adjust and communicate their ongoing plans for growth and take advantage of accounting, legal and other administrative services from the 7 Gate team. And all of this has driven exceptional momentum for the startup.
It was just months ago when Saba was faced with yet another challenge in his entrepreneurial journey. As mentioned, Spocket was selected for the highly prestigious and competitive Techstars accelerator based in Seattle, Washington. Receiving the recognition and validation from the Techstars team was a boon to Spocket and will allow it to reach a renowned network of mentors and investors that can help guide future growth and make subsequent fund-raising rounds much easier.
However, Saba was faced with bitter disappointment when his request for a travel visa to the U.S. to attend the Techstars accelerator program was denied as part of the new travel ban as enforced by the current U.S. administration. With Iran being one of the seven nations on the travel ban, Saba could not participate with his presence as the founder and leader of the Spocket team.
However, like a true leader he encouraged his team to take the opportunity to travel to Seattle and promised to be present during all of the pitch events and mentorship meetings via teleconference and provide as much leadership and support as possible from a few hundred kilometers away in Vancouver. “Oddly enough, I have found a silver lining in all of this mess…” Saba told me recently while chatting. Since parting with his team for the program in Seattle, he has been delighted to see his team flourish in ways that he had never imagined. “They are getting so good at presenting the problem we are addressing and elaborating on why we are the right team to solve it…”
This was a pivotal moment for the Spocket team, the distance was a major obstacle that could make or break the startup — and thanks to strong leadership and the quality of the team, Saba feels that in a way the team has truly absorbed Spocket into their DNA. Saba confidently considers them to be the core, “winning” team. This is yet another trait of Saba that stood out to the 7 Gate team as investors, that commitment and ability to build a nurture a strong team. This is absolutely vital for any successful entrepreneur. Saba’s natural positive energy and contagious laughter is also a moral boost to his team.
7 Gate is proud to be part of this voyage and will be along for the ride to support Spocket in its every challenge, celebrate every success and support the team with each and every pivot to come.
