Pivotal Insights – Stefan Zanetti

18 Jul

From 3H to 3E: Exploit, Experiment, Explore

July 30, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

It’s time to retire the 3 Horizons Model because it's quietly costing growth-stage tech ventures millions. The future belongs to the 3E...

15 Jul

Stefan Zanetti

3 reasons why 3H model hasn’t aged well

July 30, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

Unpopular opinion: The Three Horizons model hasn't aged well. It served as a framework to allocate innovation efforts as of 1999, but t...

12 Jul

Stefan Zanetti

Interview: 20 questions on the role of boards in pivot situations

July 30, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

Earlier this year, Kevin D. Klak (founder of Digitalrat and editor-in-chief of the magazine 'Der Verwaltungsrat') interviewed me on wha...

08 Jul

Stefan Zanetti

Blind to disruption: the horse carriage case

July 30, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

Only 1 in 4,000 horse carriage manufacturers survived the shift to cars. The rest vanished. What can we learn from it, today? When...

03 Jul

Stefan Zanetti

The climate tech company that burned 60% they’d raised in seed round

July 30, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

This is the story of the founder of ACME 23, a climate tech company, who burned 60% of his seed round... ...by not telling investo...

25 Jun

Stefan Zanetti

The founder who hadn’t slept in weeks

July 30, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

I recently worked with a founder who hadn't slept in weeks. He’d invested €100k into a consultant-led GTM motion, hoping for growth. Bu...

18 Jun

Case Study, Knowledge

The E3 Framework — How to Regain Strategic Focus in Just 5 Hours

October 22, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

I’ve watched too many good teams lose momentum — not because they lacked ideas, but because they kept guessing their next move. Drownin...

17 Jun

Background, Knowledge

Meet Pipo — The AI Strategy Companion Trained on 500+ Tech Startup Pivots

June 19, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

Meet Pipo: the AI companion trained on 500+ successful tech venture pivots. Over the last two years, I’ve studied patterns across mo...

14 Jun

Case Study, Knowledge, My3Cents

My 3 Cents on Pivots: Honest Lessons from the Messy Middle with Maren Schlieper

June 19, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

Founders love talking about scale. But let’s talk about the “messy” middle — the rebuild. That’s exactly what my new interview serie...

12 Jun

Background, Case Study, Knowledge

Why SaaS Is Breaking — And What Comes Next: The Rise of RaaS (Result-as-a-Service)

June 19, 2025
By Stefan Zanetti

I’m seeing it everywhere: the SaaS model is starting to crumble. Customers don’t want just another “software.” They want results. And t...