Selling the Pivot as a Service: Manhattan Consultants Monetize Failure
Brooklyn Startup Charges $50K to Help Companies Admit They Were Wrong
A Manhattan-based consulting firm has discovered the most lucrative business model in modern capitalism: charging failing companies $50,000 to help them rebrand their failures as “strategic pivots.” The firm, called “Pivot Partners,” specializes in crafting narratives that transform complete business disasters into inspiring stories of adaptability, innovation, and “listening to the market”—which is consultant-speak for “we ran out of money and our original idea was terrible.”
“Every failed startup is just a successful pivot waiting to happen,” explained Pivot Partners founder Brad Morrison from his Tribeca office, which is decorated with inspirational quotes about resilience and framed LinkedIn posts about embracing failure. “We help entrepreneurs reframe their mistakes as intentional strategy changes. Your social network for dogs failed? No, you ‘pivoted to a more sustainable B2B model.’ Your cryptocurrency project collapsed? You ‘strategically repositioned toward traditional fintech solutions.’ Your artisanal mayonnaise company went bankrupt? You ‘evolved your focus to consultation and thought leadership.’ We make failure sound like genius.”
The service includes comprehensive rebranding packages: new mission statements that explain why the company always intended to do something completely different, LinkedIn posts announcing the pivot with words like “exciting,” “strategic,” and “based on market learnings,” and media training to help founders discuss their failure without using words like “failure,” “disaster,” or “we were very wrong about everything.”
Brooklyn entrepreneur Sarah Martinez hired Pivot Partners after her app for rating public bathrooms burned through $2 million in venture capital and attracted exactly forty-seven users, three of whom were her parents using multiple accounts. “I was devastated,” Martinez admitted. “Then Brad showed me that I hadn’t failed—I’d simply ‘validated market hypotheses and identified an opportunity to pivot toward advisory services in urban infrastructure planning.’ Now instead of admitting my app was a terrible idea that nobody wanted, I’m a consultant who helps cities ‘leverage user-generated data insights for public facility optimization.’ I charge $300 per hour to tell people their bathrooms are dirty. It’s the same thing I was doing with the app, but now it sounds prestigious.”
The pivot-as-a-service industry has exploded across Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the concentration of failed startups provides an endless customer base. Pivot Partners alone has helped over 200 companies rebrand their failures, including a blockchain-based food delivery service that pivoted to “traditional restaurant consultation,” a meditation app that pivoted to “corporate wellness strategy,” and a company that was trying to make “Uber but for houseplants” that pivoted to “accepting that this was a stupid idea and getting regular jobs.”
“The key is confidence,” explained Pivot Partners strategist Jennifer Chen. “If you announce a pivot with enough conviction, people assume it was part of the plan all along rather than a desperate response to catastrophic failure. We teach founders to say things like ‘we’re excited to focus on our core competencies’ instead of ‘we’re out of money and our board is furious.’ Same meaning, completely different vibe.”
The service has attracted criticism from business professors who argue it’s essentially charging money to help people lie about failure rather than learn from it. “They’re enabling a culture where nobody ever admits they were wrong,” complained NYU business professor Dr. Rebecca Torres. “Failure is valuable when you learn from it and acknowledge it honestly. Just calling it a pivot and pretending it was intentional teaches exactly the wrong lesson. But I can’t deny it’s brilliant from a business perspective—the supply of failure is infinite, and apparently so is entrepreneurs’ willingness to pay for help denying it.”
Despite the criticism, business is booming. Pivot Partners has expanded to offer “Pivot Prevention Services,” where they analyze startup ideas before launch and predict whether a pivot will eventually be necessary. Spoiler: it’s always necessary. “Every startup pivots eventually,” Morrison explained. “So we might as well charge them upfront to plan for it. It’s actually more honest than what we were doing before, which is saying something.”
The firm is currently working on its most ambitious project yet: helping a consulting company that helps companies pivot to itself pivot after being exposed as a somewhat questionable business model. “It’s very meta,” Morrison acknowledged. “We’re pivoting from helping companies pivot to helping companies embrace authentic failure narratives. Which is actually just admitting what we were doing all along, but framing it as intentional. So basically, we’re pivoting to not pivoting. I expect to charge at least $100,000 for this level of sophistication.”
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/selling-the-pivot-as-a-service/.
By: Annika Steinmann.
The post Selling the Pivot as a Service: Manhattan Consultants Monetize Failure appeared first on SpinTaxi Magazine.
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