I have known about and utilized enneagram in my life for a dozen+ years. Recently, startups have been incorporating it into their organizations. What pleasantly surprised is when a few partners at venture capital firms told me that they are using it internally too.

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Hiten Shah

@hnshah

8 Jun

@niradotcom

It’s time for a thread about startup pivots...

Last week, for my startup, we announced our pivot from a document search tool called FYI to a security product called Nira (@niradotcom).

Here are answers to the most common questions people have asked me about pivoting a startup.

What made it necessary to pivot?
People assume companies pivot out of necessity because something isn’t working. When you pivot, you’re making a critical change to your business rooted in customer learnings.

With FYI, it wasn’t exactly necessary for us to pivot.

The pivot was a choice between the opportunity we had been pursuing and a new opportunity we had discovered. Every IT team we talked to wanted us to solve their document access control problems. We discovered that these problems were not only painful but also potentially costly.

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Hiten Shah

@hnshah

7 Jun

@ev

Ten Rules for Web Startups by @ev (2005)
1: Be Narrow
2: Be Different
3: Be Casual
4: Be Picky
5: Be User-Centric
6: Be Self-Centered
7: Be Greedy
8: Be Tiny
9: Be Agile
10: Be Balanced
11 (bonus!): Be Wary

Source: web.archive.org/web/2006040809…

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Hiten Shah

@hnshah

1 Jun

@usefyi

At my startup, @usefyi we have pivoted from a document search tool for everyone to a security product used by IT people. We've also changed our name to Nira (@niradotcom).

The pivot got kick-started when someone used our product in an unexpected way. Here's the story…

@marieprokopets

My co-founder (@marieprokopets) and I were at the office of a 50-person startup in SF to meet with the CEO, who was using our document search product.

We were prepared for a typical user research session where we’d watch him use our product.

That’s not quite what happened.

As soon as the CEO opened the laptop and pulled up FYI, he looked nervous.

“Did you do this? These people don’t work here anymore. Why do they still have access to my docs? Did you share them?!”

We quickly explained that he was just seeing the current state of his documents.

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