The Four Ps of Pivoting
Persona, Problem, Promise, Product — the four levers to change when you're stuck
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 95%
When a startup is stuck at any PMF level, the four things it can change are the Persona (who), the Problem (what pain), the Promise (how you pitch/position it), and the Product (what you build). All four must line up: your product delivers a promise that solves your persona's problem. Because Persona, Problem, and Promise are far cheaper to change than Product, sell-before-you-build founders should experiment with those first.
Origin
First Round Capital's B2B adaptation of the classic marketing 'four Ps,' articulated by Todd Jackson as a structured pivot framework. The '10% vs 200% pivot' insight is credited to Jack Altman, founder of Lattice.
Core principles
- 01A product's job is to satisfy the first three Ps (Persona, Problem, Promise) — those come first
- 02Persona, Problem, and Promise are much easier to change and test than rebuilding the Product
- 03You can change one P, some, or all four — different pivots require different scope
- 04Selling before building gives you customer signal as the guide, rather than guessing across 50,000 lines of code
- 05The hardest part is psychological: being willing to let go of what you've built to nail the four Ps
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose which of the four Ps is broken
Map your situation onto Persona (a tangible collection of people with money to spend, not an abstract 'market'), Problem (is it a burning, urgent pain?), Promise (is the positioning valuable and clear enough?), and Product. Usually the failure is a not-significant-enough Problem or a not-valuable-enough Promise, assuming the Persona is reasonable.
Pro tip Think of the market as a collection of specific people — 'all the HR leaders out there' — and get deep enough into their minds that you're texting and meeting them on weekends.
- 2
Prefer changing the cheap Ps first
If you sell before you build, focus on Persona, Problem, and Promise — find the promise that truly 'clicks' for that buyer. Only change the Product if the first three are right and it still isn't landing.
Pro tip Look for a much more burning pain. Customers who already have budget, are actively looking, or have tried and failed to build it themselves are the strongest signal.
Watch out Beware the 10% pivot. Jack Altman's point: most founders do a 10% pivot when they need a 200% pivot — being too attached to the existing build keeps you stuck.
- 3
Match pivot scope to the situation
Sometimes only one P changes (Ironclad kept Persona/Problem/Product, changed Promise/positioning). Sometimes the Persona is kept and everything else changes (Lattice). Sometimes all four change (Vanta). Sometimes you keep the Product code and flip the other three (Plaid).
Watch out Starting over on all four Ps at Level 2 is hard but is often exactly what's required; the trap is not doing enough to admit you aren't progressing.
In the wild
Lattice launched in 2015 as an OKR tool sold to heads of HR; customers used it for a quarter, then churned. Founder Jack Altman kept the Persona (heads of HR he now knew as friends) but changed the Problem and Promise to modern performance management — a pendulum swinging back into favor. He sold his first 5-10 customers with Figma mockups and no product; the response was 'off the charts.'
→ A successful pivot on three of four Ps, keeping only the persona, that became a durable people-management platform.
Plaid started as a consumer budgeting app that wasn't popular, but the founders had built the hard part — connecting to bank accounts. Friends (a contact at Venmo, later Robinhood and Coinbase) wanted to license that piece. They kept the code (Product) but changed Persona (from consumers to fintech developers), Problem (budgeting to bank-account connectivity), and Promise.
→ A total flip of the four Ps around a retained product core, becoming the standard bank-connectivity API.
Common mistakes
Doing a 10% pivot when a 200% pivot is needed
Founders tweak at the margins because they don't want to throw away what they built, when the situation demands a fundamental change across the Ps.
Treating the market as an abstract macro category
Thinking 'the ERP software market' instead of a concrete collection of named people with budgets prevents you from truly knowing the persona's goals and challenges.
Is it for you?
Best for
B2B founders stuck at any PMF level who need a structured way to decide what to pivot rather than flailing
Not ideal for
Teams that have genuine early traction and just need to execute — pivoting the Ps prematurely destroys a working formula (see Looker, which changed nothing)
From the transcript
“you've got the Persona the problem the promise and the product”
“kept the first one but changed the others Banta changed all four”
“most Founders do like a 10% pivot and what they need to be doing is a 200% pivot”
From the episode
A framework for finding product-market fit
Todd Jackson (First Round Capital)