I send one action packed email a week called a 1x1x1 covering crazy cool businesses I spot, updates on what we're building and buying, and lessons from the journey of an entrepreneur.
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For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
One thought from my week.
One interesting find/tool from my week.
One image from my life.
Let's dive in 👇
We’ve all heard the term “pivot.”
It’s startup-speak for:
“We were making one thing. That thing is not working. So now we’re making a different thing. Please don’t notice.”
Usually the pivot is at least somewhat related to the original business.
Instagram started as a location app and became a photo app.
Slack started as a video game company and became a workplace chat tool.
Reasonable. Sensible. Same general zip code.
But this week I may have witnessed one of the wildest pivots of my lifetime.
On Monday my wife and I were talking about Allbirds.
Remember Allbirds?
The wool shoe company that absolutely owned the feet of every tech employee from 2015–2018.
If you worked at a startup, there was a 93% chance you owned a pair.
The unofficial Silicon Valley uniform was:
Allbirds was everywhere. Celebrities wore them. Investors loved them. Barack Obama had a pair. Leonardo DiCaprio invested. At one point the company was worth more than $4 billion.
And then, like many DTC brands that went public, things got ugly.
Allbirds went public in 2021.
Since then its stock has fallen 98%.
Revenue peaked at around $298 million in 2022, but growth stalled, losses piled up, stores closed, and this month the company agreed to sell the actual Allbirds business for just $39 million.
A $4 billion company sold for $39 million.
But then came the truly wild part.
Normally when a company gets acquired, that’s the end of the story.
Not here.
The leftover shell of the public company announced it is rebranding as “NewBird AI.”
Not “Allbirds, but now with AI shopping.”
Not “Allbirds, but an AI stylist helps you find your size.”
They sold the shoes.
They sold the sheep.
And now they’re using a new $50 million financing deal to buy GPUs and become an AI infrastructure company.
A former wool shoe company is now apparently competing with data centers.
Imagine walking into the board meeting:
“Good news everyone. We are no longer in the footwear business.”
“Oh wow. What are we now?”
“GPU-as-a-Service.”
“…still shoe adjacent?”
“No. We are now adjacent to Nvidia.”
It’s such an absurd pivot that it almost loops back around to being brilliant.
Because honestly? This is kind of a killer PR move.
Think about it.
If a random new AI infrastructure startup announced it raised $50 million to buy servers, absolutely nobody would care.
You’d scroll right past it.
But if “Allbirds” announces it sold the sneakers and is now buying GPUs?
Headline.
Tweet.
Article.
Podcast segment.
My newsletter.
They essentially bought themselves a massive amount of attention by attaching a completely different business to a brand people already know.
It’s like buying a closed-down Chuck E. Cheese and reopening it as a hedge fund.
Is it weird? Absolutely.
Will people talk about it? Also absolutely.
And maybe that’s the whole play here.
The problem, of course, is that eventually you still have to build a real business.
And that part is really, really hard.
It is incredibly hard to build something people care about.
It is even harder to build something they still care about 10 years later.
Allbirds wasn’t stupid. They had a good product. Great branding. Perfect timing. They rode a wave.
But eventually the wave ended.
Because a lot of people didn’t actually love Allbirds.
They loved being the kind of person who wore Allbirds.
And unfortunately that is not nearly as durable as a shoe.
The graveyard is full of companies that looked unstoppable for 18 months.
The companies that survive for decades are different.
They don’t just ride trends.
They become habits.
They become part of people’s lives.
Nike. Costco. Patagonia. Apple.
Businesses where customers come back year after year because the product keeps solving a real problem.
That’s the hard game.
Nothing worthy of your attention!
When your business partner opens your weekly 1:1 by playing a custom guitar jingle like you’re the guest on a late night talk show and not two exhausted founders trying to remember what happened last week.
