Entrepreneur Kosta Jordanov’s journey to building a global streaming platform with FITE (now Triller TV) illustrates a crucial lesson in company building: the power of the pivot.
On their way to building a user base of millions and becoming the number one grossing app globally across all categories, Kosta and his team made not one, but two large pivots. He says the team’s willingness to embrace pivots was key to scale in the long term because they allowed them to find the right community to serve, and ultimately achieve product-market fit.
All of the founders that Bek sees go through multiple pivots, or shifts in the direction of their business, on their journey. The ones who achieve success, like Kosta, are those who plan those changes strategically and go deep on finding data to support their decision.
Embracing the pivot to find product-market fit
Kosta and his team’s initial vision was ambitious. They wanted to create a global cable company by letting anyone stream content on their TV without additional hardware. With an exceptional technical team in Bulgaria, FITE was able to build revolutionary streaming technology that was far more sophisticated than anything else in 2012, when the world was still wrapped in wires and chained to cable boxes.
They offered an incredibly diverse selection of content: the news, old movies, and even movie clips. But the content variety wasn’t driving sustained engagement; users were signing up — but not staying.
“We knew that if we wanted to improve retention, we needed to sharpen and deepen our offering,” he says.
For the second large pivot, the team analyzed the dynamics of the streaming market, and saw the advantages of live content for streaming — their technology worked especially well for live content, Kosta explains. Within live content, sports were an obvious target, but much of the industry was dominated by large broadcasters with deep pockets.
Then, the team zeroed in on the pay-per-view market in the US. Unlike regular cable television, pay-per-view involves viewers paying a fee to watch a specific program. Within this type of service, combat spots were the dominant category of content. Here was the viable niche that would prove the foundation from which to grow.
Kosta says he advises other founders to think about how to test product-market fit as cheaply and quickly as possible.
“Start small, see if you can drive some users to your website with some ads, and get them to subscribe to information about an upcoming product,” he says. “Test, pivot, use data. Create an MVP instead of going large from day one.”
““Start small, see if you can drive some users to your website with some ads, and get them to subscribe to information about an upcoming product,” he says. “Test, pivot, use data. Create an MVP instead of going large from day one.””
Kosta Jordanov, Co-founder and CEO at FITE
Plan — and deliver on your pivot
Building a business takes capital as well — and the team also needed to fundraise by the time they had decided on this important second pivot. Kosta says he chose to be extremely transparent with his investors about the shift, sharing a detailed document with his backers a month before going out to seriously raise the next round.
The plan included developing a new app, a complete brand change to reflect the new focus, and — a tough decision — some team restructuring. The team completed these major changes in just one-and-a-half months. In the end, transparency worked in the company’s favor.
“The speed of execution impressed investors, and it proved our ability to both plan and deliver,” says Kosta.
FITE started to find its momentum. The team hired an industry veteran in the US, who was instrumental, and then the numbers started showing: millions of users for combat sports. Those numbers, in turn, started to open doors. In 2020, in the depths of the pandemic, a Mike Tyson vs Roy Jones Jr. event smashed the record for the most digital PPV buys on a digital platform ever.
It was after the company’s incredible success with combat sports that Kosta finally knew it was time to broaden the kinds of events the company covered.
“Our focus helped a lot, but at a certain point in time, we started to get closer to the ceiling of the selected niche. It was time to expand in adjacent spaces.”
When FITE was acquired by US company Triller, the company rebranded to Triller TV. This helped lessen the strong association with combat sports and fuel their expansion into other sports such as soccer.
““The speed of execution impressed investors, and it proved our ability to both plan and deliver,"”
Kosta Jordanov, Co-founder and CEO at FITE
Big vision — and a GTM to get there
Kosta says that being focused at first to eventually achieve scale is necessary for all kinds of businesses.
“You need to find a community of people, and then build from there,” he says. “Amazon started as a bookstore, and I don’t think they would have become a big company had they not first been successful as a bookstore.”
He also says that entrepreneurs shouldn’t worry that being focused will hurt their chances with the best investors — if they frame it in the right way.
“Founders need to find the right balance of how to pitch investors — you need to simultaneously pitch a big vision — where you could be in 10 years — but also a specific often niche GTM story. Smart investors want to see your plan to get to a billion-dollar exit.”
Jordanov is adamant that successful companies are those that balance grand vision with specific go-to-market strategies and precise execution — and aren’t afraid to pivot. It’s the perfect illustration of the kind of path we think early-stage companies need to take to reach global scale.