Everyone knows what a pivot is. You launch something, it fails to get product market fit, so you change direction and launch something different. There are many examples of successful pivots. Flickr, Twitter, Slack, and Kik all came out of pivots.
But there is another approach to finding product market fit and I call it the “Grind.” The Grind is when you launch something, it fails to get product market fit, and you grind on it, week after week, month after month, year after year, until it does. Usually the entrepreneur who chooses The Grind is obsessed with the problem they are trying to solve and can’t let it go. This tenacity is often rewarded if everyone is patient enough.
A good example of a USV portfolio company that has executed The Grind is Brewster.
Brewster is a service that aims to do for contacts what Dropbox has done for files – keep them in sync and make them easily available on every device you use.
Brewster launched in July 2012 and I wrote about it here. While Brewster’s mission has not changed one bit, the way they have attacked it has changed a lot.
In the initial version, Brewster was a mobile app that could coexist or replace your native contacts app. It connected with all of your social networks and attempted to keep your address book up to date and also provide intelligence about your contacts. It turned out that most people didn’t really need or want a new address book, but they did want their contacts kept up to date and sync’d to whatever device they were on.
So slowly but surely Brewster evolved. But there was never a pivot. The service has evolved into a one that, today, largely works behind the scenes in the cloud to make sure the contacts you have on your phone and your desktop and tablet are the same, that they are in sync, and when another Brewster user you are connected to changes their contact information, your contacts are automatically updated. This evolution required the company to solve some difficult technical problems.
Brewster works in the background to power your contacts, providing auto-fill when writing emails in Gmail and access to all contacts from the dialer, text messaging, and email. It’ll also make finding your friends on social messaging apps, including Kik, WhatsApp, Snapchat, a more fun and easy experience.
Over this thanksgiving weekend, The Gotham Gal joined me in trying out the iPhone again. She got an iPhone 6+ and I helped her move all of her apps and activity from her Nexus 5 to her iPhone 6+. Moving her contacts was trivial with Brewster. Here’s how I did it:
1. login at brewster.com, add google via accounts and sync contacts sections (you need to both add google and then sync with it).
2. on iphone, add google account (settings app > mail, contacts, calendar > add account > google) and make to turn on contacts sync
3. that’s it. brewster will use the google connection with iphone to send updated contacts to the iphone
The Gotham Gal has >10,000 contacts. I have almost 30,000. For anyone with large contact databases, Brewster is a valuable tool. It will alert you to when you have missing email addresses, phone numbers, and faces for your contacts. I use those features a lot to continuously improve my address book.
The Grind is about continuously improving your product using market feedback and gradual but sustained product evolution. In order to execute The Grind, you need to keep your burn rate low. Brewster has been at it for almost four years now and has always kept its headcount and expense structure under control so it had runway to evolve and improve their product.
If you tried out Brewster when it initially launched and it didn’t do it for you, I’d suggest you give it another try. It’s changed a lot but still is trying to achieve the same goals. And the overall goal of a service that keeps your contacts up to date and sync’d on all of your devices is more valuable today than ever.
