After founding Roost in 2007 and raising a healthy chunk of venture investment to build a big b2c business, we made the decision to aggressively pivot the business.  What was once a vertical search site is now a fast growing SaaS platform that empowers small & local businesses on the Social Web.

Needless to say, the decision to make a 180 degree strategy change did not come easy.  Nor did it happen overnight.  But now that our new business is rocking and rolling, we know it was the right call.

People often ask me what I learned in making that pivot, and to me it boils down to 3 things:

#1 - As the CEO, the biggest hurdle is convincing yourself

I can’t begin to describe how much I agonized over the call to change direction and all it implied.  For weeks I was gently feeling the idea out by nudging those around me to see if I was crazy.  

I think in our case getting my mind around it was especially hard because we were doing ok on the original mission - I just didn’t like what the tea leaves suggested.  We had cash and were growing traffic but something just didn’t sit right.  I knew in my heart we were on a long road to a mediocre business at best.  At worst, slowly walking off a pier.

Once I could look myself in the mirror and know we needed to make a change.  Getting everyone else there was easy.  Well ok, maybe not exactly easy…but easier.

#2 - Once you know…burn the ships.  Do it yesterday.

The gravitational force of your original mission is not to be underestimated.  Your technology is rooted in it, your people are oriented around it, the ecosystem thinks of you in that context…and so on.

It is too easy to let that pull keep you from jumping into the pivot with both feet.  The sooner you recognize that this is a new mission, and it’s the rare exception that you want to carry forward into it  - the sooner you’re going to be on your way to achieving it.

#3 - OK, maybe don’t burn that one ship

If you’re like we were, there are going to be a handful of assets you built that actually do have value go forward.  In our case, these mostly had to do with customer relationships and partners we had built up through our channel marketing efforts.  For you it may be the code or the content you’ve built.  Regardless, these assets do have value, don’t throw that all the babies out with the bathwater.

#4 - Your story is the future.  Not the past

As hard as it is to let go of all the work you did pre-pivot, don’t let yourself and your story get mired in the past.  The story is where you are going, not where you have been.  You burned those ships remember?