The importance of agility: How to pivot your business model in face of unexpected circumstances

By Ashlee Ammons, co-founder of Mixtroz

While many of the discussions around COVID-19 shutdowns have been focused on restaurants and retail stores, it also impacted business conferences and networking events. As these events are the lifeblood of my startup Mixtroz, an online platform for in-person networking, my team had to work quickly to pivot our business.

Pre-pandemic, Mixtroz used real-time surveying to group event attendees while collecting useful data for the organizer. Now, in order to meet the new demands of the virtual world and survive the pandemic, we had to accelerate our product roadmap, bringing virtual meetings to market in 45 days — which typically would take six months. How were we able to do this? Because of our agile company culture.

Mixtroz was built on the belief that, in order to thrive, we needed to be able to quickly adapt. This proved essential as we worked to pivot and survive the COVID-19 pandemic. From my experience, I’ve gleaned a few strategies for building agility into your startup culture:

Ready for the storm by design

Telecommuting isn’t a new concept and, pre-pandemic, we expected virtual events would take off in the next couple of years. What we didn’t know was that it would happen much sooner than anticipated. While my team had been building a virtual feature on our platform, once the world started to shut down in mid-March, we knew it was the time to pull the trigger. By redirecting our developer team to put all their focus on this, the first version of Mixtroz’s virtual events product was available to customers by May.

Paying attention to the trends and where the industry was inevitably heading allowed us to build new features into our product roadmap. And, most importantly, the agility of our team made it possible to bring this to life quickly when we desperately needed it.

Prioritize and then prioritize again.

Getting the team focused on the most important items allowed us to stay lean and productive. If any action in a day isn’t pushing towards our top three priorities then we don’t do them. Internally as a team, we had a monthly meeting where we went through line-by-line everything and if it was 1000% necessary then it was a luxury. We pulled the reins way back, cutting everything that wasn’t completely needed like office space.

On the product side, we’re always keeping a pulse with what the customer is saying. We’re adding the things that make sense with the company mission and drive value for customers, not just releasing new features for the sake of it.

Most startup founders can relate to being completely consumed by the business. As a business owner, you eat, sleep and breathe it. The pandemic only amplified this. If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that life can be fleeting. I’ve made it a point to put my mental and physical health at the top of the priority list without feeling guilty about it. So while building an agile business is an important consideration, so too should be your health–it’s a balance.