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Now THIS is a ‘PIVOT’...Congrats Buddy Media

Now THIS is a ‘PIVOT’...Congrats Buddy Media

Howard Lindzon
October 20, 2010

First off, Congrats to Mike and Kass Lazerow for building an amazing, fast growing and profitable business in New Tork city and raising $23 million.

But, let’s get to the ‘pivot’.

This week I became pretty sick of the word ‘Pivot’ as entrepreneurs seem to overuse it. I tweeted that CEO’s of Financial Institutions don’t ‘pivot businesses’, they ‘massage numbers’.

But, ‘Pivots’ happen.

In September, 2007 I had just invested in Buddy Media to get rich off AceBucks.

From the Company’s website at the time (which thrilled me):

The focus of Buddy Media is to expand the AceBucks application and make it the primary virtual currency on Facebook. Acebucks will soon launch an API which enables developers to integrate the virtual currency into their own applications. For example if you are winning points on a poker application, you can convert those points into Acebucks.

Acebucks can be used to purchase both virtual and physical assets through the new Facebucks store which is about to be launched. Acebucks is being modeled after the AMEX rewards system. Buddy Media plans on launching some creative marketing campaigns via the Acebucks application.

The Acebucks application is going to be able to expand into a number of larger applications thanks to their powerhouse investment team and some pretty large partnerships that they are announcing in the coming days.

With Mark Pinkus and Peter Thiel investing alongside me, this seemed a LOCK. Not so.

Mike and his team with the help of the board ‘pivoted’ early and often to where they now…A platform that delivers brands ‘Power tools for Facebook’.

Thanks to Mike, Kass, the team they built and a scrappy board for making the ‘pivot’ happen.

I like the ‘Pivot’.

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