[ls-a]

> YC often also mentors founders on pivots

Interesting. I once talked to an investor (not YC) and they asked me what I would do if the product failed. I said one thing I can do is pivot. And they literally responded with "we don't invest in founders who think about pivoting"

> YC also needs to pivot it's marketing to compete with a16z Speedrun and PeakXV Surge

Maybe. A write up about the new design would be cool I think

> YC has always been founder first.

Internally yes there is a "founder community". But publicly I would argue it was product-first.

[throwaway89201]

> YC often also mentors founders on pivots

It doesn't seem unlikely to me that YC coined or at least popularized 'the pivot' in the context of changing business / startup directions. The first mention of using the word in that sense is in this comment [1] which explicitly mentions the usage by YC, while it only gets used when talking about pivot tables or more traditional uses of the word before that.

Edit: The "Lean Startup" blog series [2], which was quite influential, mentions 'the pivot' a little earlier than the post above, and really seems to coin it, so I guess that's the source (edit again: wrong :D).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806601

[2] https://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/06/pivot-dont-jum...

[dang]

That's a fun question! 806601 was from Sept 2009. I found 3 earlier cases of 'pivot' in the startup sense:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699611 (July 2009)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676514 (June 2009)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562739 (April 2009)

All 3 of those posts were by YC founders, so the term was obviously in circulation by then. The last of them includes a (broken) likn to this article: https://web.archive.org/web/20090703130211/https://redeye.fi....

Edit: that one was discussed here, but the comments didn't say the p-word:

Yogi Berra wisdom for startups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=537331 - March 2009 (9 comments)

[alephnerd]

> I said one thing I can do is pivot. And they literally responded with "we don't invest in founders who think about pivoting"

I'd say it depends on a VC's investment thesis as well as the stage your startup is at.

For the former, some wouldn't like your answer because it implies a lack of conviction (why should I invest in something the founder doesn't trust). Others wouldn't because it adds a degree of uncertainty (if this B2C reels company pivots into MLOps tooling how can I do due dilligence on my investment).

For the latter, seed/pre-seed that is open to pivoting isn't necessarily a negative flag because they are barely generating revenue as is and are trying to find PMF, but a Series B startup suddenly taking about a pivot might imply they aren't doing so hot.

> A write up about the new design would be cool I think

We ain't the LPs. We don't deserve an answer.

[anonymous908213]

It's a lot deeper than an apparent lack of conviction. Mentioning the possibility of a pivot completely changes the dynamic of the investment. 'No pivot' is asking "please invest in this startup; here's why it's a good idea". 'Pivot possible' is asking "please invest in me; I will find a way to get you a return on investment regardless of the means". Asking someone to invest in you as a person requires a certain level of egoistic thinking. Is the ego warranted? Maybe, but the investor won't know unless they build an extremely close rapport with you. Something like YC does with a 3-month on-premise bootcamp is that exact opportunity for investors to build a close rapport, so investing in people makes sense for YC. But a lot of investors are investing without building that rapport, so investing purely on the merits of business ideas makes more sense for them.