Strategy: Pivoting
Showing 88 articles for Strategy: Pivoting.
Paperless Post: building a premium digital invitation business from scratch
How I Built This with Guy Raz
October 7, 2024
Pivoting
8
Business models
8
Fundraising & VC
8
- Why investors were wrong that no one would pay for digital invitations
- Killing a working revenue model mid-launch to save the company
- COVID erased a decade of growth in one month — how they survived
How to pivot your career without losing the relationships that matter
Coaching for Leaders
July 22, 2024
Pivoting
9
Resilience & grit
8
Relationships & family
6
- Rejections signal you're reaching a higher level — not failing.
- Your core skill survives every pivot; the audience and context change.
- Relationships maintained across transitions become your safety net when roles disappear.
Pivoting from specialist to entrepreneur: one leader's journey
Coaching for Leaders
July 22, 2024
Pivoting
9
Founder interviews
8
Bootstrapping
6
- Leaving a good job you love — because it's not the right one
- How to pivot without financial risk using a parallel FADE plan
- Weak connections and outside peer groups outperform your close network
Moving from consuming leadership content to practising it
Coaching for Leaders
July 22, 2024
Pivoting
8
Productivity & habits
5
- Passive consumption of books and podcasts rarely changes behaviour without structure
- Switching from directing to questioning unlocks team buy-in and self-generated solutions
- Accepting rather than resisting necessary change dramatically lowers leadership stress
Motorola Solutions: how a legacy brand rebuilt itself around mission-critical communications
Business Breakdowns
June 26, 2024
Pivoting
9
Capital allocation
8
Business models
6
- 80% market share in a sticky, government-backed radio monopoly most investors missed
- Buybacks at one-third of today's price drove most of the long-term return
- Adjacent moves into video and software doubled the growth profile without sacrificing margins
Philip Morris International's bet on a smoke-free future
EO
February 7, 2024
Pivoting
9
Management
7
Long-term planning
5
- PMI predicts cigarettes will vanish within 10 years
- IQOS already converted 20 million smokers away from combustion
- Acting on 60–70% conviction, not certainty, drives transformation
How Kalshi won US government approval for event trading
EO
January 21, 2024
Pivoting
8
Case studies
8
Fundraising & VC
5
- All trading is event-driven — Kalshi just makes it direct
- Called 65 lawyers, all said no; stubbornness beat them all
- 2x the effort can yield 10–100x the outcome
Pruning misaligned growth to redirect company resources
EOS Worldwide
December 4, 2023
- Healthy-looking growth can still drain resources without advancing your vision
- Cutting misaligned people is necessary — choose short-term pain
- Ripping the bandaid off quickly gets the company back on track faster
Eric Ries on Lean Startup, pivots, and building companies with purpose
Lenny's Podcast Product Career Growth
October 29, 2023
Pivoting
9
MVP & prototyping
8
Vision & mission
6
- MVP is about speed to learning, not cheapness or simplicity.
- If you're asking whether to pivot, you already know the answer.
- Standard startup incorporation likely forces you to sell to your worst enemy.
AI product strategy: how Intercom went all in and what they learned
Lenny's Podcast Product Career Growth
October 26, 2023
Pivoting
9
AI strategy & adoption
9
Product-market fit
7
- Map AI's capabilities against your product before touching roadmap.
- Finn resolves 50–70% of customer queries without a human agent.
- Differentiation wins customers; missing table stakes stops them switching.
Why startups fail: lessons from 26 years of Harvard research
EO
September 22, 2023
Pivoting
8
Resilience & grit
7
Customer discovery
6
- Skipping customer discovery wastes months; four weeks saves four months.
- Early adopter signals can be false positives masking mainstream product failure.
- Blame deflection is more dangerous than self-blame — it repeats mistakes.
How successful startups pivot: real stories from YC group partners
Y Combinator
July 21, 2023
Pivoting
9
Product-market fit
7
- Brex, Goat, and GoCardless all pivoted to become billion-dollar companies.
- Pivot hell: switching ideas weekly prevents the user contact that reveals the right one.
- If you don't know your main KPI each morning, you probably need to pivot.
Using industry conferences to break into new fields as a creator
Silicon Valley Girl
June 7, 2023
Pivoting
9
Case studies
7
- Cannes is a fashion and creator conference, not just film
- One week there yielded three Dior executives and two direct intros
- Go where your next level lives — but only once you have something to offer
Why BuzzFeed shut down its Pulitzer-winning news division
Masters of Scale
May 4, 2023
Pivoting
9
Bootstrapping
6
AI strategy & adoption
5
- Facebook killed social news — BuzzFeed News had no sustainable model without it
- Nostalgia for a working past is a signal to pivot, not persist
- Generative AI is BuzzFeed's first genuinely transformative platform bet since social
What if algorithmic internet platforms disappeared overnight?
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
February 27, 2023
Pivoting
7
Work-life balance
6
- Killing algorithmic curation wouldn't destroy the internet — most of it survives
- A DIY human internet already exists: newsletters, podcasts, self-hosted sites
- AR glasses will make every screen permanently one hand-swipe away