# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published November 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-greatest-startup-pivot-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Instagram** — score 1000/1000
   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.
2. **YouTube** — score 776/1000
   Its founders first pitched it in 2005 as a video dating site before opening it up to any kind of uploaded video.
3. **Flickr** — score 558/1000
   Started as a photo-sharing feature inside Game Neverending, an online game by Ludicorp, and launched as its own site in 2004.
4. **PayPal** — score 506/1000
   Confinity first let PalmPilot users beam money to each other, then refocused on email payments and merged with X.com to become PayPal.
5. **Starbucks** — score 446/1000
   Sold coffee beans and brewing equipment in Seattle from 1971 until Howard Schultz turned it toward Italian-style espresso bars in the 1980s.
6. **Wrigley** — score 378/1000
   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.
7. **Netflix** — score 378/1000
   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.
8. **Shopify** — score 298/1000
   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.
9. **Avon** — score 298/1000
   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.
10. **Slack** — score 298/1000
   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.
11. **Twitter** — score 298/1000
   Grew out of the podcasting startup Odeo, whose team turned to a short status-message service in 2006 after Apple added podcasts to iTunes.
12. **Twitch** — score 203/1000
   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.
13. **Discord** — score 203/1000
   Its makers, Hammer & Chisel, were building the mobile game Fates Forever before turning their voice-chat technology into Discord in 2015.
14. **Groupon** — score 203/1000
   Grew out of The Point, a 2007 platform for group action campaigns, whose group-buying side became Groupon in 2008.
15. **Pinterest** — score 0/1000
   Its founders first built Tote, a mobile shopping-catalog app, before relaunching around visual pinboards as Pinterest in 2010.

Tags: brands, business, startups, companies, twitch