I'm not so sure about that. I think they found product-market fit and subsequently decided that they didn't like that market.
As a flash deals site, they were generating substantial revenue. With some operational rigor, this could have been turned into a sustainable and growable business which was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, it seems like both the founders and investors weren't satisfied with the market they had found a fit for: they wanted to instead build a product which fit a truly mass market. If they were successful in that, it would have been a billion dollar business, but they weren't.
Lesson learned: once you find product-market fit, be very careful about changing your product to reach a bigger market.
> Wouldn't the better play be to spin off the product-market fit business before doing your pivot... especially if the business was a 100+ million one.
Potentially, but that also undermines your ability to use the existing business/user base to seed growth for the new one.
To some extent, but on the other hand... you can integrate logins across a larger brand so you there's no sign-up requirements for your new product, and you can market to your existing customer base in numerous ways as long as you don't overdo it. You just can't change the existing product into something else under their feet.
I'm not so sure about that. I think they found product-market fit and subsequently decided that they didn't like that market.
As a flash deals site, they were generating substantial revenue. With some operational rigor, this could have been turned into a sustainable and growable business which was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, it seems like both the founders and investors weren't satisfied with the market they had found a fit for: they wanted to instead build a product which fit a truly mass market. If they were successful in that, it would have been a billion dollar business, but they weren't.
Lesson learned: once you find product-market fit, be very careful about changing your product to reach a bigger market.