Top 10 Companies That Pivoted and Won Big

In 1997, Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy. Steve Jobs returned and made the most consequential pivot in tech history: from a computer company to a consumer electronics and services company. The iPod (2001), iPhone (2007), and iPad (2010) each created or redefined entire product categories. Today Apple is the most valuable company in history ($3+ trillion), and Macs are less than 10% of revenue. Jobs did not save Apple — he built an entirely different company.

Stewart Butterfield founded Tiny Speck to make a massive multiplayer online game called Glitch. The game flopped spectacularly, but the internal communication tool the team built to coordinate development was brilliant. Butterfield pivoted the entire company to productize that tool, and Slack was born. It grew to 12 million daily active users and was acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion. The greatest business tool of the 2010s was a gaming company's accident.

Founded in 1889 as a playing card company in Kyoto, Nintendo spent decades trying different businesses — taxi services, love hotels, instant rice, TV networks — before finding its calling in electronic games. The pivot was not one moment but a 80-year journey of creative restlessness. Today Nintendo is one of the most beloved brands in entertainment, with a market cap exceeding $85 billion. The lesson: sometimes the right pivot takes a century.

YouTube was founded in 2005 as a video dating site called "Tune In Hook Up." When nobody used it for dating, the founders opened it to all video content. The first video uploaded was co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo saying "these elephants have really long trunks." Google acquired YouTube 18 months later for $1.65 billion. Today it generates $30+ billion in annual advertising revenue and is the second-most-visited website on earth.

Nokia started in 1865 as a paper mill, diversified into rubber boots and cables, and did not enter telecommunications until the 1960s. By 2000, Nokia was the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, controlling 40% of the global market. The pivot from industrial conglomerate to consumer electronics giant took a century, but when Nokia found its niche, it dominated absolutely. (The subsequent failure to pivot to smartphones is a separate, tragic story.)

Kevin Systrom's original app, Burbn, was a location-based check-in service competing with Foursquare. Usage data showed that people were ignoring the check-in features but obsessively using the photo-sharing function. Systrom and Mike Krieger stripped everything else away and launched Instagram. Within two years, Facebook acquired it for $1 billion. Today Instagram has 2+ billion monthly users and generates $50+ billion in ad revenue. The lesson: watch what users actually do, not what you built for them.

Marvel Comics filed for bankruptcy in 1996. Its most valuable characters (Spider-Man, X-Men) had been licensed to other studios for pennies. Under new leadership, Marvel Studios took a desperate gamble: self-financing Iron Man (2008) with a second-tier character and a recovering actor (Robert Downey Jr.). The film launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has grossed over $30 billion worldwide. Marvel went from bankrupt to the most profitable entertainment franchise in history.

Tobias Lutke wanted to sell snowboards online but found existing e-commerce platforms inadequate. So he built his own. The snowboard shop (Snowdevil) was moderately successful, but the platform underneath it was revolutionary. Lutke pivoted from selling snowboards to selling the tools to sell anything. Today Shopify powers 10% of all US e-commerce, has a $100B+ market cap, and enables millions of small businesses worldwide.

Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams originally built Odeo, a podcast discovery platform. When Apple launched podcasts in iTunes and crushed the market, Odeo was dead. During a brainstorming session, Dorsey pitched a "status update" service — short text messages broadcast to followers. The team pivoted to what became Twitter. Despite its subsequent controversies and Musk acquisition drama, the pivot from failed podcast tool to global communication platform was brilliant.

In 1997, Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy. Steve Jobs returned and made the most consequential pivot in tech history: from a computer company to a consumer electronics and services company. The iPod (2001), iPhone (2007), and iPad (2010) each created or redefined entire product categories. Today Apple is the most valuable company in history ($3+ trillion), and Macs are less than 10% of revenue. Jobs did not save Apple — he built an entirely different company.

Stewart Butterfield founded Tiny Speck to make a massive multiplayer online game called Glitch. The game flopped spectacularly, but the internal communication tool the team built to coordinate development was brilliant. Butterfield pivoted the entire company to productize that tool, and Slack was born. It grew to 12 million daily active users and was acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion. The greatest business tool of the 2010s was a gaming company's accident.

Founded in 1889 as a playing card company in Kyoto, Nintendo spent decades trying different businesses — taxi services, love hotels, instant rice, TV networks — before finding its calling in electronic games. The pivot was not one moment but a 80-year journey of creative restlessness. Today Nintendo is one of the most beloved brands in entertainment, with a market cap exceeding $85 billion. The lesson: sometimes the right pivot takes a century.

YouTube was founded in 2005 as a video dating site called "Tune In Hook Up." When nobody used it for dating, the founders opened it to all video content. The first video uploaded was co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo saying "these elephants have really long trunks." Google acquired YouTube 18 months later for $1.65 billion. Today it generates $30+ billion in annual advertising revenue and is the second-most-visited website on earth.

Nokia started in 1865 as a paper mill, diversified into rubber boots and cables, and did not enter telecommunications until the 1960s. By 2000, Nokia was the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, controlling 40% of the global market. The pivot from industrial conglomerate to consumer electronics giant took a century, but when Nokia found its niche, it dominated absolutely. (The subsequent failure to pivot to smartphones is a separate, tragic story.)

Kevin Systrom's original app, Burbn, was a location-based check-in service competing with Foursquare. Usage data showed that people were ignoring the check-in features but obsessively using the photo-sharing function. Systrom and Mike Krieger stripped everything else away and launched Instagram. Within two years, Facebook acquired it for $1 billion. Today Instagram has 2+ billion monthly users and generates $50+ billion in ad revenue. The lesson: watch what users actually do, not what you built for them.

Marvel Comics filed for bankruptcy in 1996. Its most valuable characters (Spider-Man, X-Men) had been licensed to other studios for pennies. Under new leadership, Marvel Studios took a desperate gamble: self-financing Iron Man (2008) with a second-tier character and a recovering actor (Robert Downey Jr.). The film launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has grossed over $30 billion worldwide. Marvel went from bankrupt to the most profitable entertainment franchise in history.

Tobias Lutke wanted to sell snowboards online but found existing e-commerce platforms inadequate. So he built his own. The snowboard shop (Snowdevil) was moderately successful, but the platform underneath it was revolutionary. Lutke pivoted from selling snowboards to selling the tools to sell anything. Today Shopify powers 10% of all US e-commerce, has a $100B+ market cap, and enables millions of small businesses worldwide.

Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams originally built Odeo, a podcast discovery platform. When Apple launched podcasts in iTunes and crushed the market, Odeo was dead. During a brainstorming session, Dorsey pitched a "status update" service — short text messages broadcast to followers. The team pivoted to what became Twitter. Despite its subsequent controversies and Musk acquisition drama, the pivot from failed podcast tool to global communication platform was brilliant.