The Power Of Second Acts For Startups

Successful second acts by individuals and companies can be inspirational. There have been several such examples in recent times in which companies have found success after pivoting from their original business model or focus, such as Shopify.

Below I’ll discuss some successful second acts starting with my own startup journey in which we shifted from business-to-consumer to business-to-business. These transformations can be made for growth momentum, by market forces and for survival.

Gaining Growth Momentum

My first startup grew to $4 million in revenues in three years. We were the pioneers in web-to-wireless technology and were the first to convert a Palm PDA into a wireless email device in the late ’90s. Our solutions were sold to consumers, and we saw the potential to repurpose our technology to power enterprise business workflows. We transformed our client-only technology into a client-server platform and launched the world’s first mobile server platform, which enabled enterprises to power mobile workflows. It went on to become an industry-leading multi-device, multi-network platform resulting in an enterprise value of $185 million in the year 2000.

It was a pivot that was performed to gain growth momentum by repurposing existing technologies to serve newer and lucrative markets. A technology that was bound to get commoditized was platformized. More recently, Shopify is an example of a “tool to platform to ecosystem” transformation. 

Responding To Market Forces

Market forces can also trigger transformation for both longtime businesses and startups. This requires agility on the part of leadership to seize the moment, steer the ship in the right direction and chart a new course of prosperity.

For example, the digital revolution has forced traditional software companies to cloudify their technology. Microsoft and Adobe, despite being goliaths, were able to not only transform their businesses to become cloud-centric, but in the process changed to subscription-based models thereby effecting two pivots at the same time. In the case of Microsoft, steering a large organization in this new direction can be attributed to the unstinted focus of its cloud business leadership and the simultaneous withdrawal from markets in which the company was not a leader.

Read more: forbes