Pivotal

Pivotal is a newsletter about data, investing, and startups. It has three underlying themes: the data explosion, markets in everything, and software eating the world.

The hottest Substack posts of Pivotal

And their main takeaways

The Worst Outcome is a Mediocre Success

98 implied HN points • 21 Sep 23

💼 Business Startups Entrepreneurship Experiments Success Learning

Startup experimentation is about learning from clear successes or failures, not mediocre results.
The danger of a mediocre success is the lack of clarity on whether a strategy can be scaled or needs to be changed.
It's important to design experiments with well-defined outcomes to avoid the messy middle of mediocre success.

Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

62 implied HN points • 03 Oct 23

💼 Business Decision-making Entrepreneurship Investing Startups

Strong opinions, weakly held is a powerful decision-making approach under incomplete information.
Commit fully to your chosen path, but be open to changing direction if needed.
Maximizing rate of learning is key - move quickly with strong opinions and adjust when necessary with weakly held beliefs.

Data in the Age of AI

1 HN point • 20 May 23

🕹 Technology AI Data Software Compute Digital economy

Data and compute values have changed, affecting software and data business models.
The data explosion in the decade led to new successful business models downstream.
AI impact on data and compute leads to increased data value and the need for new tools and ecosystem in the AI-first world.