If a startup goes under, is that betrayal to? To me, a failure is not betrayal.
A startup that needs to pivot to survive is probably equivalent to a failure of the startup, but survival for the team and the founders (a "company").
For a customer, the biggest problem is with all of the SaaS "products" which are ephemeral and require the parent company to keep it up or release it as free software. With desktop software, you could at least keep the last version.
But all things considered, if you are not going under, you should at least reimburse for whatever service was not rendered once you pivot.
Are they paying users?
Generally speaking, if the startup doesn't pivot, what's the future look like for the startup and users?
But if you are user because of Path A, and startup midway decided to go on Path B what is your future? What if pivot isn't working for you as user?
I get it that if you are paying user you have some support or what ever.
The reason that I'm asking is this: how to justify the trust in some new technology devolved by startup? How can I convince decision makers that this is the way to go when 1 in 10 startups fail.
I think it really depends on how big of a pivot and how good they were pre-pivot.
Rockmelt made one of my favorite browsers (UX-wise) in 2010-2011. A year later they pivoted to ... I don't even remember what anymore. But it wasn't at all a product I cared about.
"Betrayal"? I don't know. It just was pointless to me and I stopped using their products.
Would I have kept using their products if the new stuff they were building seemed useful to me? Yeah, I think so. They had enough credibility with me to give them a chance at another product.
> Do you think that when startup change direction that they are lying and betraying current customers?
From just these words and no more information I would like to say "no". But as someone who saw a bit of that, I notice that the way they do it is always falls to "yes, betrayal".
I mean that every service becames influenced by TikTok level of greed but no greed-powered service or proprietary piece of software has ever decided to remove unwanted/unjust functionality.