The Pinterest Pivot: Building Personal Moats for Success

The Pinterest Pivot: Building Personal Moats for Success

In the world of startups and entrepreneurship, pivoting is often seen as a necessary step towards success. One prime example of a successful pivot is the transformation of Tote, a mobile shopping app, into the widely popular platform we now know as Pinterest. The pivot from Tote to Pinterest was not only a strategic move but also a result of recognizing an unmet need and a huge opportunity.

The story begins with Ben Silbermann, the co-founder of Pinterest, who initially launched Tote as a replacement for bulky catalogs. While Tote was successful in providing users with a convenient way to browse and save their favorite items, it lacked a crucial feature - easy mobile payments. This inconvenience threatened the very existence of the app.

However, Silbermann noticed an interesting trend among Tote users. While they weren't making purchases through the app, they were amassing collections of "favorite" items to share with their friends. This sparked a childhood memory for Silbermann, who had collected insects as a kid. He realized that people have an inherent tendency to share their collections with one another, and saw this as an opportunity.

Silbermann pitched his idea for a visually appealing platform where people could display all their collections to an investor named Cohen. The pitch was so crisp and succinct that Cohen immediately saw the potential and decided to invest. Silbermann's pivot from Tote to Pinterest was iterative, a direct outgrowth of what he had learned from his first business. He recognized an unmet need and a huge opportunity to create a platform that catered to people's inclination to share their collections.

This brings us to the concept of building personal moats for success. A personal moat is a set of unique and accumulating competitive advantages in the context of your career. It is something that sets you apart from others and drives increasing, compounding value over time. To build a personal moat, you must find something special, specific to you, that is difficult for others to replicate or reverse engineer.

One way to identify your personal moat is by asking others about something that comes easy to you but is hard for them. This could be a skill, knowledge, or a unique perspective that you possess. Additionally, the concept of Ikigai can be helpful. It is the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, and what the world needs. Finding your Ikigai can lead to a personal moat that is not only fulfilling but also valuable in the internet economy.

In the quest to build a personal moat, it's important to avoid entering the rat race unless you're the fastest rat. Instead, focus on building an asset that grows over time without constant intensive effort. This can be achieved by creating passive social capital or passive knowledge gaining. By leveraging your unique skills and knowledge, you can build an asset that compounds over time, providing you with social and financial capital.

When considering specialization versus generalization, both approaches can work. However, it is crucial to actually be good at something. If you choose to be a generalist, aim to be the best at the intersection of a few different skills. Find what comes easy to you but is hard for others, and then get so good that they can't ignore you. This expertise can then be leveraged to accrue social and financial capital.

In conclusion, the story of Pinterest's pivot from Tote teaches us the importance of recognizing unmet needs and seizing opportunities. Building personal moats is a key aspect of achieving success in our careers. By identifying our unique skills, knowledge, and perspectives, and leveraging them to create assets that compound over time, we can establish our own competitive advantages. Three actionable pieces of advice to build personal moats are: 1) Identify what comes easy to you but is hard for others, 2) Get so good at it that they can't ignore you, and 3) Leverage your expertise to accrue social and financial capital. So, take the time to discover your personal moat and start building your path to success.