A difficult pivot on the way to platform-as-a-service for Heroku.

1. The Epic Pivot
‘s story
Adam Wiggins
Startup Lessons Learned 2011

3. Background

4. Founded July 2007

5. Vision:
a new model for web
application
deployment

6. $250M exit in
January 2011

7. Pioneered
platform-as-a-
service

8. Rags to riches

9. Founders:
James, Orion, Adam

10. Six weeks to build
the prototype

12. End-user computing

14. Filemaker Pro for the
web
(but with real
programming tools)

20. Closed $3M VC
round in Feb 2008

21. We felt like we were
on top of the world...

22. ...but we had gotten
ahead of ourselves

23. Trouble in
paradise

24. We still hadn’t found
product/market fit

25. A cool, stylish
product is not
product/market fit

26. Traction is not
product/market fit

27. Enthusiastic users
are not product/
market fit

28. Adoration of your
peers is not product/
market fit

29. Problems?

30. We had the wrong
users (segmentation)

31. Real apps come from
real developers

32. Real developers
wanted to use their
own tools

33. $ heroku create myapp
$ git push heroku master

34. Development vs
production apps

35. if production?
# entire product
else
# whole other product
end

36. Split-brain product

37. Narrow focus is
crucial in a startup

38. Realization: we
needed to narrow
scope

39. We decided to
refocus on API/Git
and production apps

40. Six months of trying
to support both
paths

41. Realization: we
needed to narrow
scope even further

42. Cutting the web
editor

43. Cutting the web
editor =
heartbreaking pivot

44. Success creates
momentum,
emotional investment

45. Distracts from search
for scalable business
model

47. Early success had us
locked into the
wrong position

48. Pivoting means
cutting what you love

49. The Pivot

50. Sept 2008 began
pivot

51. Three month plan to
remake our product
nearly from scratch

52. Jan 15, 2009:
new platform launch

55. Pivot sleight-of-
hand: rebranding

59. Today,
herokugarden.com
redirects to
heroku.com

60. Epic but gradual
pivot

61. Lessons

62. Understanding early
success: all we had
was people’s
attention

63. Converted that
attention into market
understanding and
investment capital

64. And yet, early
success almost killed
our company

65. It’s hard to recognize
need for pivot when
company isn’t failing

66. It’s hard to figure out
what to pivot to
(even when it’s right
in front of you)

67. Get the right users

68. Ultra-narrow focus

69. Cut what you love if
that’s what it takes

70. The end.
Adam Wiggins
http://adam.heroku.com/

71. (Epilogue/shameless plug: we’re
hiring.)
http://jobs.heroku.com/