Brian Pivar

VP of data and AI @milwaukeetool. Ex-Uber, Ex-Amazon, Ex-KraftHeinz

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

@GGuptaSF Uber on! Round 2!

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

@tturriff_ i do. i think open will win, and closed will lose.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

Pretty sweet video. I will never forget day 1 in vegas at 10^10 with @travisk rolling out the atoms and bits branding for uber.

[a16z @a16z]

Travis is back.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

It’s so easy to win, if you can control your own mind.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

@travisk In!

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

My fix: Tie every player and coach’s money directly to team wins. Not PPG, not assists, not “load management” — WINS. You rest or slack off? Your whole team’s paycheck takes a hit. Watch how fast guys start playing hard every night.Until the NBA does something like this, the product is impossible to watch. Pure fraud.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

The new NBA draft rules are stupid. Now the teams that miss the playoffs but get close get rewarded with better odds? This is exactly why the league has zero integrity. Tanking is built in, and instead of fixing it they just protect the mediocre teams. Worst team in the league should get the #1 pick. No lottery. Simple. Like the NFL. Why doesn’t the NFL have this tanking problem? Because they actually reward winning.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

From @jordanbpeterson
“what the hell are you doing?
and why?
Where do you want to go?
Why do you want to get there?
How are you gonna get there?
How are you gonna mark your progress?”

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

Nobody knows what’s gonna happen in the future. Everything is a probability.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

I thought I could turn $10K into $100K in 6 months. I was wrong.

10 months ago, I asked Perplexity AI how to do it.

But instead of just taking an answer, I had it interview me first. 20 questions about my background, my skills, what I'm actually good at. Then I asked it to give me 10 ideas tailored to my talent stack.

My talent stack:
- 20 years trading options and crypto
- VP of Data and AI at a $10B company
- Started as an engineer writing SQL and building dashboards
- I've made 1,000% on a single trade. I've also turned thousands into zero in a single day.

None of those skills alone would have been enough. But stacked together, they made what I'm about to share possible.

One of the 10 ideas Perplexity gave me: build an automated crypto trading system.

So I bought a $70/month Linux server, logged into a bare terminal at midnight, and felt like a hacker.

That was 10 months ago.

Since then:
- 17 strategy iterations
- Millions of backtests
- 3 different brokers
- AIs that hallucinated results
- Bugs that cost me real money

Today I have an autonomous ETH trading system live on Coinbase. It runs every night, generates signals, sizes positions, places its own orders, and emails me the results.

Don't buy into the hype you see on X.

There is no shortcut. It took 10 months of real work, real losses, and constant iteration just to find an edge. Anyone telling you they built something like this in a weekend is lying to you.

I'm not sharing this to sell you anything. I'm sharing it because I want to find other builders doing this kind of work. People who understand this is a long game, not a get-rich-quick scheme.

This is the first in a series. I'm going to walk you through the entire journey, including the parts that went wrong, because that's where the real lessons are.

Next: The setup. APIs, terminals, and every wrong tool choice I made before finding the right one.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

@Doofydoofys @APompliano amazon was the first for what exactly?

Apple was the first for what exactly?

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

Openai = yahoo
Anthropic = google

First mover advantage is real but temporary. Technical depth compounds. Yahoo had 60% market share before Google existed. Anthropic was founded by the people who built OpenAI’s core research, then left because they saw a better way. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

@erikalee Gotta upgrade to max!

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

Openai = yahoo
Anthropic = google

First mover advantage is real but temporary. Technical depth compounds. Yahoo had 60% market share before Google existed. Anthropic was founded by the people who built OpenAI’s core research, then left because they saw a better way. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

OpenAI just raised $122 billion at a $852 billion valuation.

Just insane growth.

"We are now generating $2B in revenue per month. At this stage, we are growing revenue four times faster than the companies who defined the Internet and mobile eras, including Alphabet and Meta.

ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, and over 50 million subscribers. Search usage has nearly tripled in a year, and our ads pilot reached more than $100 million in ARR in under six weeks."

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

Openai = yahoo
Anthropic = google

First mover advantage is real but temporary. Technical depth compounds. Yahoo had 60% market share before Google existed. Anthropic was founded by the people who built OpenAI’s core research, then left because they saw a better way. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Banger 😂

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

Openai = yahoo
Anthropic = google

First mover advantage is real but temporary. Technical depth compounds. Yahoo had 60% market share before Google existed. Anthropic was founded by the people who built OpenAI’s core research, then left because they saw a better way. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

goddamn...wow.

[Brian Pivar @Pivar]

ChatGPT = Yahoo
Claude = Google

Yahoo turned down buying Google for $1M in 1998. By 2000 Yahoo was paying Google to run its search. By 2004 Google had 50%+ share. By 2010, 83%. Yahoo sold for $5B. Peak value was $125B. The team that builds the best technology always wins. It’s just never obvious at the start.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: OpenAI’s internal projections reportedly show the $122,000,000,000.00 they raised today gives them as little as 18 months of operational runway before they need to raise again.