Introducing the“Pivot Pyramid”
A startup is a company that is confused about what it’s product is, who its customers are and how to make money. — Dave McClure
A few years ago — I published an idea.
A guideline to help experiment with startups and come up with startup ideas that I called the “Pivot Pyramid”. That got picked up by the 500 Startups Blog, and publications like Venture Beat.
Great startups constantly experiment with their business to find:
- The right customer to focus on
- The right problem to solve for these customers
- The right product to build to solve these problems
- The right technology to build this product
- And the right growth channels to scale their product and achieve product market fit.
These layers are a set of assumptions startups make about the market, and the product they are building to tackle it. A simple, but powerful notion is to understand that these layers are interconnected, and that changes in each layer effects the other layers in a certain way.
Pivot Pyramid: Pivoting Your Startup the Right Way
Great growth marketers are not necessarily the most knowledgable marketers — they approach marketing like scientists. They have a thesis on how an experiment will drive growth (e.g. new advertising channel), they run the experiment, measure the results — and if the experiment is successful, they make it repeatable.
Simply put, Pivot Pyramid suggests that you can take this experimentation approach and apply it to your assumptions and unknowns across any layer of your business — such as your customers, problem, product, technology and growth.
Pivot Pyramid: The Book
By means of publishing this first blog post; I wanted to announce my side project, putting a book together to dive deeper into the Pivot Pyramid Model!
I intend to analyze each layer of the pivot pyramid (e.g. Customer, Problem, Product, Tech, Growth); — accompanied by case studies and stories about startups who have pivoted around each of these layers to achieve product market fit.
If you have ideas or stories to share — or have thoughts about potential collaboration, please do let me know! You can reach out to me through the Typeform link below:
About the Author
Selcuk Atli, who introduced the “Pivot Pyramid” model is a serial entrepreneur based in New York.
He’s currently CEO of Bunch, a group video chat app for live mobile games. Previously he was a Venture Partner at 500 Startups, he co-founded Boostable (acquired by Metric Collective), Manifest Commerce (acquired by Rakuten) and the non-profit Nomadic Minds. He’s a Fulbright Scholar, and singer and song writer for the Indie Rock Band The HMMS.
