{"id":4549,"date":"2021-04-01T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=4549"},"modified":"2021-03-19T16:56:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T23:56:53","slug":"4549","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=4549","title":{"rendered":"When to pivot from your original plan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plans do not often work as devised.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

We are not always smart about the market or the product.\u00a0 We may miss the context of the\"\" times and come to market too soon or too late. We might not have researched the market diligently or used a focus group or other market research. \u00a0Well, the good news is that great teams are not bound by their original product or marketing plan.\u00a0 Greatness finds one definition in management\u2019s ability to \u201cpivot,\u201d or change the plan in reaction to its early response from the marketplace.<\/p>\n

How do investors usually react to a pivot?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Investors most often celebrate teams that quickly find flaws in the original plan and reallocate resources in another direction before more wasted resources.\u00a0 Even the term, pivot, seems to call up images of a light-footed dancer able to move so very quickly in any direction.<\/p>\n

My story of a great pivot<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite example of a world class pivot comes from the CEO and board of one of my most successful investments.\u00a0 Green Dot Corporation was formed by an entrepreneur in the year 2001 to create a product to permit those without credit cards to purchase items on the Internet.\u00a0 Think of it:\u00a0 to shop on the web, you must have a card, not a nine- digit routing and bank account number.\u00a0 The young, inexperienced entrepreneur had two assets that attracted me \u2013 rights to use the MasterCard name on this new product, and a laser focus to make this work in any form possible.<\/p>\n

Early market experience can cause a need to pivot<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Email readers, continue here…]\u00a0<\/em><\/span> \u00a0Over the years, the original vision changed dramatically several times as the world\u2019s first debit cards were invented by the firm, positioning the card to be used by the un-bankable, those unable to obtain credit cards or in some cases \"\"even checking accounts.\u00a0 The firm grew to dominate its new field, create an infrastructure to allow any of its current 100,000 retail stores to simple activate or load the card with money from any cash register.\u00a0 It replaced Western Union as the preferred way to send money across great distances.\u00a0 And it built a billion-dollar market and then some \u2013 where the original vision and plan might have restricted the then-small company to a tiny percentage of that.<\/p>\n

And we who held early stock celebrated together the ringing of the NYSE opening bell the day that often-pivoting company went public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plans do not often work as devised.\u00a0 We are not always smart about the market or the product.\u00a0 We may miss the context of the times and come to market too soon or too late. We might not have researched … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finding-your-ideal-niche","category-growth","category-positioning"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}