The hottest Strategy Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Business Topics

The End of Brands As We Know Them

The Intersection • 217 implied HN points • 01 Jun 23
💼 Business Strategy
  1. The evolution of brands is being reshaped by AI, impacting how individuals can compete with institutions.
  2. Technological advancements are upgrading the cognitive operating system of human society, from the printing press in the 15th century to generative AI in the modern era.
  3. Business strategies are shifting from organizational scale to functional speed, from transactional to conversational, and from relying on unique selling propositions to clear points of view in order to stay relevant in the Intelligent Age.

Expensive Shelfware

Perspective Agents • 6 implied HN points • 25 Jan 26
💼 Business Strategy
  1. AI itself is incredibly powerful, but many companies see little value because they haven't invested enough in people, workflows, and everyday use.
  2. Big enterprise buys and long roadmaps often leave AI as expensive shelfware, while starting small and embedding AI into real team workflows drives adoption and impact.
  3. Real returns come from investing in a 'Human OS'—systems, habits, coaching, clear outcomes, exec sponsorship, and relentless testing—or else AI sits idle and becomes a competitive drag.

Most Human Wins

Not Boring by Packy McCormick • 270 implied HN points • 22 Jan 25
💼 Business Strategy
  1. As technology advances, many skills we thought were unique to humans are becoming easier for machines to do. However, this doesn't mean that humans are being made irrelevant; rather, we need to find what makes us unique.
  2. The process of commoditization means that things that were once rare and valuable are now easier and cheaper to access. This opens up new opportunities for what skills can be considered valuable in a changing economy.
  3. It’s important to adapt and use the tools at our disposal creatively. As machines take over more tasks, we should focus on our human strengths and experiences, making them central to our endeavors.
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity:

Why Are Interceptions Overblown Now?

House of Strauss • 22 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
🎾 Sports Strategy
  1. Interceptions get blown up by social media and highlight culture, so mistakes feel much bigger now and push players and teams toward avoiding visible errors.
  2. Modern efficiency stats (like passer ratings and QBR) overweight completions and punish interceptions, which incentivizes safer, shorter throws and can reduce overall offensive production.
  3. Offenses should balance efficiency with productivity by accepting some risk—more air yards, deeper targets, and occasional interceptions can lead to more yards and points than a purely conservative approach.

Conviction-Led Contrarianism

Investing 101 • 138 implied HN points • 24 May 25
💼 Business Strategy
  1. It's important to think differently and go against the crowd sometimes. Instead of just trying to fit in, being a contrarian can lead to amazing innovations.
  2. Don't let what other people think stop you from pursuing your ideas. Often, we worry too much about others' opinions, but we can be more free and creative when we focus on what we truly believe.
  3. Always aim to have strong reasons for your beliefs. It's great to be a contrarian, but make sure you're right and not just being difficult for the sake of it.

Vitamins and painkillers — or remedy?

The Jolly Contrarian • 119 implied HN points • 12 Jan 24
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Business offerings can be classified as painkillers (address immediate problems) or vitamins (guard against problems over time).
  2. Painkillers may provide quick revenues, but vitamins are stickier, build better relationships, and offer stable income over the long term.
  3. In the legal operations world, the focus should be on diagnosing and providing practical advice, rather than just masking problems or offering generic solutions.

TBM 314: Using Enabling Constraints for Situational Awareness

The Beautiful Mess • 396 implied HN points • 07 Oct 24
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Rapid growth can lead to chaos and mistakes in organizations. It often happens when teams are expanded quickly without proper planning.
  2. Using enabling constraints can help manage the mess during fast changes. They act like simple rules to keep teams focused and aware of potential issues.
  3. It's important to regularly check on how things are going, especially when many people are involved in projects. This helps catch problems before they become serious.

Principles for the Permaweird

Breaking Smart • 219 implied HN points • 09 Feb 25
📖 Philosophy Strategy
  1. Chiang's Law states that science fiction focuses on strange rules, while fantasy revolves around special people. This idea helps in understanding different storytelling styles.
  2. Chor-Pharn's Law suggests that knowing your identity leads to bigger conflicts, while uncertainty can cause cultural battles. It highlights the importance of self-awareness in societal issues.
  3. Boyd's Razor emphasizes prioritizing integrity over blind loyalty in leadership. This balance fosters a healthier work culture and encourages diverse ideas, preventing toxic environments.

Product + Content marketing = Engaging content

42 Slash • 176 implied HN points • 02 Mar 23
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Product marketing and content marketing should work in sync to create engaging content
  2. Content traditionally belongs in marketing while product marketing focuses on the product at the lower end of the funnel
  3. Aligning content marketing and product marketing can lead to a more effective and valuable content strategy

The Cure to Many Corporate Ills

The Digital Leader Newsletter -- By John Rossman • 176 implied HN points • 18 May 23
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Customer centricity is vital for businesses to succeed by focusing on customers' needs and expectations.
  2. Amazon's example shows the power of customer-centricity in driving innovation and improving customer experience.
  3. To become more customer-centric, businesses can start by defining what it means for them, exploring current examples, envisioning future scenarios, and drafting guidelines.

RDEL #25: How can engineering managers improve the OKR and goal setting process?

Research-Driven Engineering Leadership • 99 implied HN points • 15 Jan 24
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Improving the OKR process can enhance team development by focusing on effective goal setting methods.
  2. Investing in data quality and transparency and promoting communication can address challenges in working with others and ensuring alignment on goals.
  3. Striving for consistency, promoting learning communities, and guiding teams in OKR implementation can lead to successful adoption and use of OKRs across the organization.

Don't ignore the neon signs in your organization

Ruben Ugarte's Growth Needle™ • 59 implied HN points • 19 Mar 24
💼 Business Strategy
  1. It's important to notice when something isn't working in your organization. Ignoring these signs can prevent progress and improvement.
  2. Sometimes organizations stick to a plan just because they believe hard work will eventually pay off. This can lead to repeated failures instead of trying new approaches.
  3. Listening to small, offhand comments can reveal bigger problems. These 'neon signs' can show the need for a change in strategy or direction.

Going Up-Market Will Not Solve Your Problems

The Breaking Point • 299 implied HN points • 06 Jun 23
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Focusing on larger customers with bigger contracts may not solve all your business problems.
  2. The decision-making process and needs of larger customers can be vastly different from smaller ones.
  3. Shifting to target larger customers requires significant time and changes across your marketing, sales process, and team.

How to build your GTM strategy from scratch

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged • 291 implied HN points • 06 Nov 24
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Building a go-to-market (GTM) strategy involves understanding stages like problem-solution fit, product-market fit, and go-to-market fit. Each stage helps you grow and attract more customers.
  2. Create an Early Customer Profile (ECP) based on real evidence to identify your first customers. This helps you target those who have a strong need for your product and are willing to pay.
  3. Differentiate your product by refining your unique value proposition (UVP) and unique selling proposition (USP). This makes it clear why customers should choose you over the competition.

NFTs and the Future of Subscription Businesses

DeFi Education • 459 implied HN points • 09 Dec 22
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Businesses like subscriptions because they provide steady income and build customer loyalty. This makes business planning easier.
  2. NFTs can change how subscriptions work by offering unique ownership and access. This could make subscriptions more attractive to consumers.
  3. Traditional views on NFTs and subscriptions might be missing the bigger picture. There are new opportunities to explore that could benefit both businesses and customers.

Do The Hard Parts First

The Breaking Point • 319 implied HN points • 16 May 23
💼 Business Strategy
  1. When starting something new, focus on doing the hard parts first to ensure it's worth building.
  2. Consider starting by thinking backwards and tackling the highest risk parts first.
  3. Experiment with reaching your audience before building your product through methods like newsletters or events.

From Smartphones to Smart Cars: Xiaomi's Automotive Business and Its Strategic Implications

Tech Buzz China Insider • 79 implied HN points • 03 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Strategy
  1. Xiaomi aims to rival Porsche and Tesla in the automotive industry and be among the top five global car manufacturers within 15 to 20 years.
  2. Lei Jun, the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Xiaomi Group, took inspiration from a meeting with Elon Musk in 2013, which led to Xiaomi's venture into car manufacturing.
  3. Xiaomi has made continuous investments in the automotive field since 2014, covering everything from auto components to complete vehicles and aftermarkets.

Well-framed problems

The Uncertainty Mindset (soon to become tbd) • 139 implied HN points • 01 Nov 23
🚌 Education Strategy
  1. Framing problems well is important to find good solutions. It helps to balance being open to many ideas while also being clear about what is acceptable.
  2. Good problem framing encourages innovative thinking. A broad question can lead to more varied solutions than a narrow one.
  3. Making tradeoffs clear in problem framing helps focus the search for solutions. It saves time by pointing us toward the best options while avoiding distractions.

🐿️ The Leadership Heist - The Insanely Profitable Tech Newsletter

Squirrel Squadron Substack • 3 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Treat your executive team like a heist ensemble. Choose leaders whose talents complement each other so the group can execute complex plans smoothly.
  2. Prefer generalizing specialists (T-shaped people) who can step into multiple roles and back others up. Develop them on the job or assign multiple portfolios rather than hiring only narrow experts.
  3. Hire for low ego, title-blindness, and a willingness to pitch in, because the best hires often don’t match every line on the job spec. Be prepared to sift through candidates and make the most of the skills you find.

The Missing Ingredient in Your Ambitious Goals: Macro Focus

The Caring Techie Newsletter • 17 implied HN points • 03 Dec 25
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Macro focus means choosing the right long-term battles and committing to them for months or years, so you manage your career trajectory instead of just your daily to-do list.
  2. Five common patterns stop people from achieving macro focus — unclear goals, juggling too many priorities, not doing enough, doubting the plan, and quitting too soon — and each has a clear fix like getting specific, picking one primary focus, scaling effort, trusting a documented plan, and setting realistic timelines.
  3. Macro focus is a skill you can build by defining what success looks like, making concrete weekly commitments, using checkpoints and external support, and then sticking with the plan long enough for results to compound.

Turning NPS into action: how to make the most out of a... dubious metric*

UX Psychology • 218 implied HN points • 14 Dec 22
💼 Business Strategy
  1. NPS (Net Promoter Score) measures customer loyalty based on likelihood of recommendation. Responses are categorized into Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.
  2. To make the most of NPS, ensure it is measured properly by defining target audience, using standardized surveys, analyzing data regularly, and avoiding biases.
  3. Despite NPS limitations, leverage its open-ended question for uncovering user pain points, recruiting research participants, involving all team members, complementing with other metrics, and using it strategically.

Mother of Frankenstein: Volume One

Have You Played? • 78 implied HN points • 30 Jan 24
🎨 Art & Illustration Strategy
  1. Mother of Frankenstein: Volume One is a tabletop puzzle game that feels weightier due to its subject and length.
  2. The game features puzzles that are well-designed and include elements of wordplay and narrative storytelling.
  3. There is a lack of urgency in the story's pacing and the game's marketing does not effectively explain why players should care about the secret being unearthed.

The "good" experiment

The Uncertainty Mindset (soon to become tbd) • 159 implied HN points • 06 Sep 23
💼 Business Strategy
  1. When facing uncertainty, it's better to run small and cheap experiments instead of committing to a big strategy. This keeps you flexible.
  2. A good experiment must have a clear hypothesis, provide useful insights whether it fails or succeeds, and be designed to be sneaky so organizations don’t resist it.
  3. Experimenting helps you learn and get clarity when things are unclear. It's a practical way to tackle problems without getting stuck.

Low-drag machines

The Uncertainty Mindset (soon to become tbd) • 79 implied HN points • 25 Jan 24
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Startups thrive on uncertainty. It's not something to avoid; it's actually what helps them find new opportunities and grow.
  2. Traditional management practices from established companies can slow down startups. These practices often don't fit their need to adapt and pivot quickly.
  3. To be successful, startups need to embrace an 'uncertainty mindset.' This means understanding the difference between risk and true uncertainty, allowing them to create better strategies and operations.

How to Become Irreplaceable in Your Market

Tiny Empires • 73 implied HN points • 09 Jul 25
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Focus on what makes you unique. It's important to find your special skills and interests that no one else can replicate.
  2. Be very specific in your niche. The more details you include about whom you serve, the harder it is for others to compete with you.
  3. Your personal story can be a big advantage. Use your background to connect with clients and show them how it makes you the right choice for their needs.

The Not-so-Lazy Holiday Reading List

Platforms, AI, and the Economics of BigTech • 11 implied HN points • 28 Dec 25
💼 Business Strategy
  1. In a world where execution is cheap, restraint and reflection are advantages — do less of the wrong work and spend time deciding what really matters.
  2. Don’t just dig faster; make maps that show where to dig — focus on clarity, limits, and redesigning workflows rather than only improving speed.
  3. AI reshapes systems so answers get cheap; the lasting value comes from asking better questions, owning decision rights and governance, and re‑architecting around new units of value.

Celebrate the Wins

Tippets by Taps • 6 implied HN points • 14 Jan 26
💼 Business Strategy
  1. Founders often work years ahead of the company and see milestones as inevitable, but the rest of the team lacks that context and needs wins acknowledged.
  2. Celebrating achievements shows people that their long hours and sacrifices mattered and gives them a clear story about progress.
  3. Pause to mark meaningful moments with simple rituals—Slack messages, all‑hands, dinners, or small swag—because those shared memories build culture and help the team through tough times.