<story><title>Pivot or Fail?</title><url>https://avc.com/2018/11/pivot-or-fail/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smacktoward</author><text>I feel like this misses an obvious source of the appeal of the pivot for the founders, namely that &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; money in your hands today beats &lt;i&gt;potential&lt;/i&gt; money in your hands tomorrow.&lt;p&gt;If you shut down and start over around the new idea, maybe you’ll be able to raise money around that idea, but then again, maybe you won’t. Nothing’s guaranteed; and if you find you &lt;i&gt;can’t&lt;/i&gt; raise the money again, you end up with nothing at all.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, in the existing business, there’s a big pot of money &lt;i&gt;already raised&lt;/i&gt; just sitting there for you to use. Using it could mean problems down the road, of course. But &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; using it means problems &lt;i&gt;right now&lt;/i&gt;, so it’s not hard to see the appeal of just grabbing it and figuring you’ll cross those bridges if and when you ever actually come to them.</text></comment>
<story><title>Pivot or Fail?</title><url>https://avc.com/2018/11/pivot-or-fail/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ttul</author><text>If I could go back in time, I would have chosen to fail rather than pivot. At the time (of the pivot) what made the choice to fail difficult was that we had _some_ success aka revenue, and so could just carry on. What I see now is that I could have still shut that thing down, paid back investors with the trickle of remaining revenue, and in parallel started a new thing.&lt;p&gt;Hindsight is always 20&amp;#x2F;20, but I think the article is broadly right. If you need to pivot, it’s probably better to fail gracefully instead.</text></comment>