↪️ The art of the pivot
Kiki's dramatic shift has made a lot of headlines, but it's also given pause to look at the art of pivoting — something fundamental to the success of many startups.
Everybody is talking about pivots, without actually talking about pivots. The term made its way into quite a few headlines last week about Blackbird-backed Kiki’s tone deaf social media announcement that its five male founders wanted to “pivot” from subletting to creating a club for “girls in NY”.
The company claimed it had moved out of the subletting business (before back-tracking on that a little) after being “enlightened” around the issue of women “living not thriving” in New York when they hired their first female employee.
It seemed like the kind of parody of a startup you'd read in The Onion, and the problems around the way it was communicated have been very well-documented by many smart women in this industry. But the issues with Kiki’s pivot don't actually end there.
First off, while there's much eye-rolling outside of the industry over the term, pivots are actually necessary, encouraged and have been critical for many well-known companies.
