The Perpetual Pivot

If you’re willing, agile, attuned to the market, and ready to learn, there’s never a wrong time to change your business plan.

- Joe Keohane

It was supposed to be a simple job: The legendary Los Angeles–based grocery and liquor delivery company Pink Dot had a solid business, but it had an aging customer base and a raft of competitors, and it wanted new branding as a way to attract younger customers. It hired Raphael Farasat for the job, and at first, he thought it would be straightforward—a new website, new logo, maybe some odds and ends.

But the job would end up redefining Farasat’s career, and that of his company, Truffl. Some jobs have the potential to do that—so long as an entrepreneur is able to see bigger opportunities, then step up to do whatever needs to be done to meet them.

It all began when Farasat noticed some big problems: Pink Dot didn’t have an app of its own, its menu had barely changed in years, and many of its customers were still placing orders through an 800 number. “We realized that changing your logo is not going to transform your business,” Farasat says. “There are a lot of things that needed to change— operationally, technologically, product- wise. We needed to change the whole relationship between Pink Dot’s customers, and the company.”