Pivoting in software startups. Motivations, process and evaluation

Abstract

: Various studies affirm that software startups fail in the first months or years, generally because they did not validate their business hypothesis, and they refuse to implement changes called pivots. In this paper we present the results of a field study whose purpose was to identify how pivots are decided, implemented, and evaluated in software startups. From interviews with founders of ten software startups, it is found that the most common factors that generate the need to pivot are: “negative reaction from customers”, “positive reaction from an unforeseen customer segment” and “focus on the target market”, and the most used types of pivots are “Technology”, “Value capture” and “Customer segment”.