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Comment by palijer | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty decent list if you are interested in the concept and looking for examples.

https://github.com/fikrikarim/companies-with-successful-pivo...

Thank you for sharing this -- I didn't realize this existed. Instagram is covered in your link, and you can hear about it from the founder in this really good Lex Fridman podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pvpNKUPbIY

These lists always kind of remind me of popular bands that changed music over time. The most drastic "pivot" I've ever come across in a known band is Ministry, who went from a benign new-wave Depeche Mode clone in 1983 [1] to a pseudo-Cabaret Voltaire in 1986 [2], then to full-on metal by 1991 [3].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VFqVRepm6U

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mui0sj-kxLY

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYGKCanqfA

Thanks, the Ministry evolution was funny, and made me think of this comparably drastic one:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959) [0] to Live-Evil (1971) [1] to Rated X (1974) [2]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAxefAW4J1g

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sDYPbiwMA

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrjFtbGKqFk

This is bonkers -- I don't really follow/listen to jazz, but was aware of "So What" and the other Miles Davis standards -- I had no idea he went this direction. Was he just stretching the genre as far as possible at this point? The "genre-stretching" thing is something I've been thinking about lately and trying to identify -- the band Swans has done this convincingly imo with rock, especially with the 2013 album "To Be Kind."

Hi :-) What genre? ..jazz?! I don't think of those second two as jazz. People play music, not genres. They and their music just have to be labelled to put in bins in record stores I guess. Some other Miles "directions":

classical/flamenco (1960) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38zRx9AYDHQ

latin/bossanova (1963) https://youtu.be/PnCg05hrBWs?t=1089

guitar-based rock (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up9yWDl0jBc

funk (1972) https://youtu.be/AIqXprCArdo?t=1520

Others e.g. Bitches Brew (1970), In a Silent Way (1969), are totally different again from these.

On this list, Nokia originally producing rubber is probably the funniest.

Soylent is funny - nutrition to mobile phone towers.

Other way around

Nokia always wins the pivot contest.

They still do!

hah curious about soylent

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