[andrelayer]

The only part you're missing is that PG has said many times in the past that they invest mostly in the team and that many teams that go through YC end up changing their idea slightly or completely. So the beginning of this situation doesn't seem very unusual, just that they never actually figured it out.

[femto113]

I can accept this rationale for investing in teams over ideas, but when did "pivoting" go from meaning "a modest change in direction" (e.g. switching the target market for your SASS product from consumers to enterprise, or making what was initially a secondary feature a primary one) to "start over from scratch with an entirely unrelated idea"? Seems like another term is needed--"flailing" perhaps?

[wpietri]

Normally I use the term "leap" for the latter.

You're completely correct that the original meaning of the term was specific. Eric Ries originally wrote, "I want to introduce the concept of the pivot, the idea that successful startups change directions but stay grounded in what they've learned. They keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future. Over time, this pivoting may lead them far afield from their original vision, but if you look carefully, you'll be able to detect common threads that link each iteration. By contrast, many unsuccessful startups simply jump outright from one vision to something completely different. These jumps are extremely risky, because they don't leverage the validated learning about customers that came before." [1]

Sadly, the term is getting killed by Semantic Diffusion [2]. Precisely because people want to dignify their flailing with a fancy-sounding word.

[1] http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/06/pivot-dont-jump...

[2] http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SemanticDiffusion.html

[untog]

It doesn't seem that rare. The creators of Reddit joined YC with a pitch for ordering delivery food through your phone.

[_delirium]

A least in the YC model, that seems to be a common definition of "pivoting". A bunch of their companies end up pursuing products bearing very little resemblance to the idea they were accepted on. If anything they seem to view being too attached to your idea as the bigger negative.

[drumdance]

pg called Soylent "the biggest pivot in YC history"

"Affordable wireless networks" somehow became a food company.

http://blog.soylent.me/post/51007573199/the-biggest-pivot-in...

[jimbokun]

That's an odd one, but still something with an empirical basis for the decision.

If I remember correctly, the creator of soylent invented it for his own needs, blogged about it, then was stunned by the amount of interest.

In this case, it seemed like the idea kept changing before they had even figured out much about it, or had any evidence to justify a different direction.

[jlarocco]

Yeah, that almost seems like a bait and switch scam.