What is the greatest startup pivot of all time?

Some of these companies threw out a failing product and found a giant hiding inside it. Weigh the leap, not just the destination.

1. 1
   Instagram

   Began as Burbn, Kevin Systrom's location check-in app, before he and Mike Krieger stripped it down to photo sharing and launched Instagram in 2010.
   1000pts
2. 2
   YouTube

   Its founders first pitched it in 2005 as a video dating site before opening it up to any kind of uploaded video.
   776pts
3. 3
   Flickr

   Started as a photo-sharing feature inside Game Neverending, an online game by Ludicorp, and launched as its own site in 2004.
   558pts
4. 4
   PayPal

   Confinity first let PalmPilot users beam money to each other, then refocused on email payments and merged with X.com to become PayPal.
   506pts
5. 5
   Starbucks

   Sold coffee beans and brewing equipment in Seattle from 1971 until Howard Schultz turned it toward Italian-style espresso bars in the 1980s.
   446pts
6. 6
   Wrigley

   William Wrigley Jr. sold soap and then baking powder in Chicago in the 1890s, handing out chewing gum as a premium until the gum became the business.
   378pts
7. 7
   Netflix

   Founded in 1997, it began renting DVDs by mail in 1998 and launched online streaming in 2007; the DVD-by-mail service shut down in 2023.
   378pts
8. 8
   Shopify

   Launched in 2006 after its founders built their own software to run Snowdevil, an online snowboard shop, and decided the software was the better business.
   298pts
9. 9
   Avon

   Book salesman David McConnell found his customers wanted his free perfume samples more than his books, turned to perfume in 1886, and the business became Avon in 1939.
   298pts
10. 10
    Slack

    Built by Tiny Speck as an internal chat tool while making the online game Glitch, which closed in 2012; the tool launched publicly as Slack in 2014.
    298pts
11. 11
    Twitter

    Grew out of the podcasting startup Odeo, whose team turned to a short status-message service in 2006 after Apple added podcasts to iTunes.
    298pts
12. 12
    Twitch

    Launched in 2011 as a gaming spin-off of the lifecasting site Justin.tv, it outgrew its parent, which shut down in 2014 after the company renamed itself Twitch Interactive.
    203pts
13. 13
    Discord

    Its makers, Hammer & Chisel, were building the mobile game Fates Forever before turning their voice-chat technology into Discord in 2015.
    203pts
14. 14
    Groupon

    Grew out of The Point, a 2007 platform for group action campaigns, whose group-buying side became Groupon in 2008.
    203pts
15. 15
    Pinterest

    Its founders first built Tote, a mobile shopping-catalog app, before relaunching around visual pinboards as Pinterest in 2010.
    0pts

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