Definition

A strategic change in business direction that's celebrated in Silicon Valley but called failure literally everywhere else. It's the entrepreneurial equivalent of missing your exit on the highway and announcing you meant to take the scenic route.

Also: A graceful way of saying the original plan was a dumpster fire and now we're trying something completely different while pretending it was the plan all along. Silicon Valley's favorite dance move.

Example Usage

"We pivoted from a dating app to a supply chain management platform, which was a natural transition because both involve connecting things that don't want to be connected."

Related Terms

Beginner

list

A catalog, register, or inventory of items; the foundation of every startup that promises to 'organize all your data.' Also what project managers obsessively update while pretending it controls chaos.

💼 Corporate / Business
Intermediate

Stakeholder Buy-in

Getting agreement and support from the people who are affected by or interested in a decision. A euphemism for 'we need to convince people to do this whether they want to or not.'

💼 Corporate / Business
Intermediate

White glove

Premium, high-touch service typically reserved for important clients, as if your company is a fancy butler. Everyone else gets the regular gloves, or no gloves at all.

💼 Corporate / Business
Beginner

decision tree

A flowchart-like diagram mapping out possible decision paths and their consequences, beloved by analysts who believe organizational chaos can be tamed with rectangles and arrows.

💼 Corporate / Business
Intermediate

money vision

That entrepreneurial superpower where you see profit potential in literally everything, from spare time to random objects. It's viewing the entire world through a lens of 'how can I monetize this?'

🚀 Startup / VC
Intermediate

subsidiary

A company that's technically independent but is actually owned and controlled by a larger parent company, like a corporate marionette with its own tax ID. These daughter companies allow mega-corporations to compartmentalize operations, limit liability, and create organizational charts so complicated they require flowcharts with footnotes. It's how one massive conglomerate can appear as fifty different brands, all reporting to the same ultimate boss.

💼 Corporate / Business

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