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Entrepreneurship & Startups vocabulary · Pivots, Failure & Exits

Pivot

Meaning in entrepreneurship & startups, with examples

/ˈpɪvət/verbCore term

In entrepreneurship & startups, pivot means: To change a basic part of your business, such as the product, the customer group or the way you make money, because the original plan is not working.

In Turkish: pivot yapmak, yön değiştirmek, rota değiştirmek

How it is used

Very common in startup talk, both as a verb (we pivoted to B2B) and as a noun (a pivot). Founders pivot after customer feedback or weak numbers. A pivot keeps what the team has learned and changes direction; it is not the same as starting from zero.

Example sentences

  1. We pivoted from a consumer app to software for clinics after talking to fifty doctors.

  2. The board asked whether it was time to pivot or to keep going for another six months.

Common collocations

  • pivot to
  • pivot away from
  • make a pivot
  • a successful pivot
  • pivot the business
  • product-market fitThe stage when a product clearly meets a real need in a large enough market, so customers buy it, keep using it and recommend it without much pushing.
  • fail fastThe idea of testing ideas quickly and cheaply so that you find out early what does not work and can stop or change direction before wasting time and money.
  • iterateTo improve a product in repeated short cycles: build a version, test it with users, learn from the results and make the next version better.
  • business modelThe way a company creates value for customers and earns money from it: who pays, what they pay for, how much and how often.

More terms: Pivots, Failure & Exits

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