January 5, 2026
Do you even pivot?
5 Years, 12 Pivots
12 pivots later: BAML gets love while commenters ask 'what's the mission'
TLDR: A YC duo survived 12 pivots and now launched BAML to make AI chatbots give cleaner, structured answers. The community split: builders are excited, while critics say there’s no mission and too much chasing money, with “do you even watch Twitch?” echoing as the thread’s favorite roast.
Five years, twelve pivots, and a legendary Y Combinator burn—“Do you guys even watch Twitch?”—have turned this founder saga into pure internet theater. The latest twist: BAML, a new way to wrangle AI chatbots so they spit out clean, structured answers. And the crowd? Split down the middle. The loudest chorus is the vision police, with one commenter practically waving a megaphone: “What makes you, YOU?” Another blasted the hopscotch from Twitch ads to HR surveys to creator finance as proof this is “about the money, not the mission.” Ouch. Yet builders are hyped, calling BAML “useful” for making unpredictable AI feel less… chaotic; think LLMs (large language models) like smarter chatbots that finally follow directions. The thread also turned the Twitch question into a meme—people kept joking “do you even watch Twitch?” every time a past idea popped up, plus a few confetti jokes for that first $16 in monthly revenue. A spicy side plot: someone read the early coding bootcamp idea as students dodging income-share paybacks, sparking ethics side-eye. Through it all, fans applauded the cofounders’ 50–50 split and not-hating-each-other energy. The big debate: is relentless pivoting brilliant persistence searching for product-market fit, or just chaos with no compass?
Key Points
- •Over five years, two cofounders executed 12 pivots, with the current focus on BAML, a programming language for using LLMs.
- •Early efforts were part-time and tested several ideas (coding bootcamp with ISAs, Twitch ads, MMO game SDK, creator earnings, employee surveys) but gained little to no user traction.
- •They identified mistakes such as moving goalposts, reluctance to charge users, and working on ideas they didn’t care about, and emphasized learning to pivot faster.
- •Equity and trust were managed via a 50-50 split, supported by a $4,000 monthly contribution until the founder went full-time.
- •They built Gloo, a voice-first Slack/Discord competitor, achieved $16 MRR in Aug 2022, joined Y Combinator two months later, and received advice from YC partners to pivot and consult Tandem.