In 1892, William Wrigley Jr., who had recently moved to Chicago and taken up work as a soap salesman, began packaging chewing gum as a free extra alongside the cleaning products. When people started requesting the gum more than the soap, he made a decision that would go down in history. Wrigley is now one of the oldest continuously operating corporations in the US, sells its products in over 180 countries, rakes in upwards of $5 billion in revenue a year, and employs over 16,000 people in over 20 countries worldwide.
In 21st century terms, William Wrigley’s fateful decision could be described as a ‘pivot’, defined by Eric Reis in his book The Lean Startup as a “structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.” The theory states that by staying agile and paying close attention to certain performance indicators, startups can capitalize on what is working about their business model, while quickly getting rid of dead weight.
As Silicon Valley philosophy gains more and more traction in the MENA region, we’re seeing more examples of successful pivots than ever before. Here are four notable – and promising – regional companies that have changed tacks over the past year.
Yebab, the UAE
Yebab, which originally launched in 2008 as a wedding planning website, “has been profitable since the beginning,” but brother-and-sister founders Murshed and Mareyah Mohamed eventually noticed that “60% of Yebab.com’s visits come from mobile devices,” said Murshed Mohamed when Wamda spoke to him in March.
But “having an app version of the website wasn’t going to be enough. To not miss the future, we had to… solve problems that affect people’s daily lives,” Murshed says in an email to Wamda.
Original article by Stephanie d’Arc Taylor
Continue reading at Wamda:
4 promising pivots by MENA startups in 2014
Comments
Facebook
Twitter
Contact
Elan.tv
Comments