We laid off half our staff. One year later, we’re thriving.

Photo credit: Brendan Church / Unsplash

“Rebuilding a company from scratch: is that what you really want to do?”

“Yes!” I replied.

I started Alpha Camp (AC) in 2014 after attending a coding bootcamp in the US, which inspired me to build my own “school” in Asia with top-quality instructors and students. By 2017, AC had trained over 4,000 learners with campuses in Taipei and Singapore, and earned the highest student rating among coding bootcamps in Singapore.

But in February of that year, I decided to shut down our 4,000-square-foot campus in Taipei and relaunch as an online training provider. We closed down our office, laid off half the staff, and moved away from several great partnerships.

It was the biggest risk we’d ever taken as a company. But one year later, we’re thriving after raising over US$700,000 in crowdfunding for our first online program.

If you missed my article about our big changes, you can read it here. This week, I want to share my advice to fellow founders on pivoting.

How do you know it’s time to pivot?

As a startup founder, you probably feel like things aren’t working 80 percent of the time. Obviously, you can’t afford to simply change your entire business model or rebuild your company in reaction to every challenge. Knowing whether to start fresh or tough it out can be a very difficult decision.

I encourage you to start by asking yourself these questions:

1. Am I fulfilling my company’s mission?

If you answer no, the next step is to understand whether this is an easy fix or if it requires a fundamental business change.

AC’s mission is to empower individuals for the future of work by supporting their lifelong learning. While our physical bootcamps worked for some students, the rigid structure and the traditional classroom model did not allow us to cater for every learner. To build a solid foundation, students needed the flexibility to learn at their own pace.

We needed to fundamentally reinvent how we approach education.

2. Can I continuously improve my product over a relatively short period of time?

How to execute a pivot

Parting words