Random Pivots That Shaped Modern Internet As You Know It (9 items)

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  (#6) Yelp

  Yelp founders, who previously worked for fellow pivoting company PayPal, originally created an email system that would allow people to contact others for recommendations on local businesses then made the leap to provide a one-stop shop for local business reviews.

  The company's 2012 IPO valued Yelp at $900 million. 
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  (#9) Fab

  Fab co-founders Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer made a risky decision back in 2011. They decided to kill off their social network for gay men, Fabulis, and relaunch it as an e-commerce design site called Fab. Soon after the pivot, the site grew to more than 12 million members generating more than $200k a day.
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  (#5) Instagram

  Before it was everyone's favorite place to post selfies, Instagram started as a location-based service called Burbn, which was similar to Foursquare. You could check into locations, earn points for hanging out with their friends, and share pictures inside of the app.

  Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. 
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  (#3) Nintendo

  • Consumer electronics, Video game, Interactive entertainment, Video game industry

  Nintendo began as a playing cards manufacturer in late 18th Century Kyoto, Japan, and attempted to diversify many times over the next century. They tried their hand as a taxi firm, a TV network, a food company selling instant rice, and a "love hotel." Moving into the toy market in 1966, Nintendo eventually found its niche producing electronic games.

  Nintendo is now worth $18.4 billion.  
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  (#2) Facebook

  • Social Network

  Before it was Facebook or The Facebook, it was Facemash, where users (basically college-aged bros) could compare two faces side by side to vote on which was hotter. Needless to say, Facebook was the much more successful venture.

  Facebook's IPO was one of the biggest in technology (and Internet history), with a peak imarket capitalization of over $104 billion. 
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  (#8) Groupon

  Groupon started as a side project of founder Andrew Mason, who predominately ran a site called The Point, which aimed to raise funds from donors to do social good. Donors would only pay if the funds reached the "tipping point" to get the job done. 

  Mason used the same "tipping point" concept to unlock discount on activities and services through Groupon. Probably not surprisingly, people swarmed to the daily deals site while Mason's "social good" concept did not do as well. 

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