This guy's got the right idea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The technology industry is having a "Seinfeld" moment.
When Vimeo co-founder Jakob Lodwick raised $1.5 million in funding in December for a new venture that didn't have a product in mind yet, it was something of a novelty. No more.
The exception is now the rule, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reports that "pivot" is the buzzword on the lips of every Silicon Valley founder and venture capitalist these days. Having some kind of notion what line of business your fledgling company might want to pursue used to be a prerequisite to raising capital. Now, it's a mark of hubris. You don't tell the market what it needs; you gently offer it a series of options, which are less viable concepts than ritual sacrifices aimed at cultivating the favor of the start-up gods. It's called "iterating."
Pivoting and iterating are nothing new, of course. My colleague Bruce Upbin has chronicled the slaloming course of Color, a well-funded and loudly-hyped photo-sharing app that reimagined itself as a Facebook-based service after failing to find an audience the first time out.
But it's another photo app that's to responsible for the trendiness of what might be termed the Zen approach to launching. (Success comes not through perseverance but through letting go.) Instagram started life as Bourbn, a Foursquare-like check-in app. Nobody liked it all that much except for the photo-sharing part. So Kevin Systrom and his co-founders ditched the rest, including the name, and 18 months later sold it to Facebook for $1 billion.
Fluke or winning formula? Y Combinator thinks it's the latter. The kingmaking Silicon Valley incubator is introducing a program this summer "targeting groups that don't have an idea yet," reports the Journal.
Do you have a can't-miss idea for a start-up that could be the next Facebook, Pinterest or Draw Something? Great. Write it down on a piece of paper. Now burn that piece of paper. Congratulations. You're halfway to your first billion.
