🌱 🔧 Pivots & Progress: Embracing Change, Empowering Growth

Have you ever seen the episode of Friends where they’re trying to wrestle a couch up the stairs? If not, you’ve probably seen the GIF of the scene somewhere on the internet or in a group chat (included below for reference).

Yeah, that’s been us—minus the couch, add a tech twist.

Why Do Startups Pivot?

Lots of startups pivot. Netflix started out by sending DVDs in the mail. YouTube’s founders initially considered launching it as a dating site before quickly pivoting to a general video-sharing platform. Slack was a failed game called ‘Glitch’. Typically, a pivot comes when you’re not growing fast enough, could be growing faster, or for a list of other reasons, but while seemingly unconventional to established orgs, it is how young companies have always stayed alive—by optimizing to what’s working.

Where We Started

In year one, our vision was to become “The Amazon of Advertising”. A bold goal (bold for emphasis), to connect hundreds of small and medium sized networks (with analog and digital inventory) to a demand-side platform of sorts. The intention was to enable the long-tail of publishers to sell more, faster, and with less overall operational burden.

What We Learned

We onboarded all sorts of amazing media companies. From digital billboards to taxi tops to CGI-generated “FOOH”, as well as content creators and more. Our partners helped to assemble a marketplace that impressed hundreds of marketers at SXSW earlier this year. They LOVED seeing so many cool things in one place!

We met with hundreds of agencies, advertisers, and media companies and despite everyone’s excitement, it turns out that changing an entire industry’s buying behavior is a mighty bold goal. But that’s why we do startups, right? Big, hairy, audacious goals. Goals that scare us.

But when the feedback is loud and clear—‘The tools you’ve built for your own platform are exactly what we need for our own business!’—you know it’s time to shift gears.

As we started engaging with hundreds of ad sellers, content creators and publishers that use our platform, we realized that what they really needed were the right tools to manage their own sales, not just another platform to list ads. The shift was inspired by our users’ feedback—they wanted more control, more customization, and a more streamlined process. So, we pivoted to focus on empowering sellers to build their own stores, giving them the autonomy and flexibility they need.

Where We’re Going

Ironically, the through line here is that our tech is the most valuable part of what we do. Like Shopify, Fucimo will continue to enable sellers by offering tools such as a digital deal room, a store, offerings, interactive mapping, and the ability to create direct, private marketplace deals on alternative types of ad inventory—from out-of-home ads to event sponsorships, and everything in between.

If you have ad space to sell, content or an audience to monetize, a boring PDF media kit, or the need to streamline communication and accelerate deal flow, Fucimo may be for you.

And if not? That’s okay too! My hope is that you take away the permission to pivot.