stratagem Cheat Sheet

the great company

you cannot create a great company unless you start with a good company, annd a good company is one that stands for what society stands for.

vision

be stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details.

goodharts law

when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

revenue drivers

sales are made on impulse (limited editions induce fomo)

concentrate on adjacent and synergies that increase cash flow pools and revenue overall.

expired domains

- SEO advantages (backlinks, authority, traffic)

- Ranking faster

- 301 redirect usage

go to market (gtm)

marketing

create constant reasons for the brand to be in the news (the more frequent, the better)

revenue (sales) boosters

import duty and tax included	easy, tracked 30 day returns
free express shipping on orders over [$X]+	receive your order in 4-7 days

campaign

utm:

a snippet of text added to the end of a URL to track the metrics and performance of a specific digital marketing campaign.

numerical cognition

"a quarter of a million" is likely to sound bigger to the human ear compared to "two hundred and fifty thousand".

the deal (negotiation)

- lawyers are deal killers.

- 4.7-5% commission on transactional finders fee and/or deal broking.

- the one who talks first, loses.

- you get the wife (manage to persuade her), you get the man.

apr strata

0% APR tricks people into thinking “oh well, I’ll get the highest spec” and the individual spends more than they would have if they purchased in full upfront.

ideation

- if the experts love you, run for the hills as this could be an indication of a dated idea.

- invent tools and the tools will change us/the team (and then we co-evolve)

creating a stack

like microsoft did with PC from cpu -> os -> applications -> servers -> cloud. then to the end user (b2c) -> business (b2b) -> consumer (c2b)

moat strata

planned obsolescence

subscription based business models

religion

pyramid scheme monopolies

middleman delivery services

consumer elasticity

set up a team revenue gross management (simulate the effects on the consumer elasticity of price increases)

speed, you must buy time

how:	hire exceptional and well-connected talent
	acquire tech and/or integrate systems

subscriptions

- 1.5T USD globally by 2025.

- subscription model is transmuting beyond the digital world and into the physical world.

- more than half of consumers (54%) underestimate how much they spend mostly on subscriptions by at least $100.

- up to 70% forget/rarely use their subscription services.

- use dark patterns to make cancellation complex (on avg. 6.7 clicks to get from homepage to cancellation).

- ultimately the end consumer will not own anything.

design

consistency within design makes it easier to recognise a brand.

good design is simplicity:	kanketsu (simple, perfect, complete).
less, but better:	strip down the product to what is essential, take the essentials and amplify them to make it better.
great design is iconic:	it's not a fas, it's not trendy or ostentatious and not easily thrown away
design is all about the details:	- impacts how we feel about the product/service when we interact with it.
	- design is not the output, design is the process and everyone is in it.
	- most easiest/ convenient to use wins.
	- every single step added cuts conversion by 50%.

design is intent:	- 1 second delay/latency (7% less conversions, 11% decrease in page views, 16% less customer satisfaction)
	- fast is the principle.
	- there is either careless design or thoughtful design, with the latter being the optimal.

revenue model (card)

- transaction fee (swipe fee)

- annual, foreign transaction, late and over-the-limit fees

- consumer carried debt

- discount revenues (58% TAR)

- charge a premium to merchant to accept cards

- closed loop system (how much the consumer spends is usually more important than the number of transactions made)

spend-centric model*

B2B Saas

availability (avoid product not working when customers need the most)	security (no account breaches)
control (do not have to reach out to support for every single thing)	trust is the key to keeping customers happy

decision making tree

should be ROI centric*

cynefin framework

decision matrix and type2 decisions

similar to the concept of one way door decisions vs two way door decisions.

one way door = big, hard to reverse once done.

two way door = reversible, can correct mistakes quickly.

how to decide on what to build/develop

companies are learning organisms (the focus is to learn as quick as possible).	try various hypothesis (if they're set up well then you learn what to do)
invest in various testing frameworks (ship, get a read-out, compare to the base version of the product)	when you do stuff well you don't have to do big and crazy things

“In a world that’s changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.“

DIKW pyramid

illustrates the progression of raw data to valuable insights.*

eisenhower matrix

day 1 strata

day 2 is stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.”. “And that is why it is always day 1

reasons fenty clothing failed (case study)

the collection was boring:

- it was not reflective of her

- absence of dominant weight on artistic talent of design and too much on personality and publicity the individual attracts (doesn’t work, not sustainable)

- her fans couldn't afford it

- the people who could afford it didn't care about it

- the marketing sucked

data the decision

to prevent confirmation bias

to prevent and mitigate loss aversion (loss felt twice as hard than wins)

crm (customer relationship management)

a system for managing all of the companies interactions with current and potential customers. the goal is simple: improve relationships to grow business.

vertical v. horizontal integration

vertical:	apple's vertical integration enables the creation of superior products and a seamless user experience by maintaining control over every aspect of design and development, from start to finish.
horizontal:	in contrast, horizontal partnerships, like those seen with Android or Windows, often struggle to achieve the same level of cohesion and consistency. The challenge lies in aligning numerous independent companies and their resources around a unified vision, let alone delivering a singular product, experience, and ecosystem that feels pre-eminent.

long tail keywords

pharma

Buy up drugs that have been abandoned by other companies for pennies on the dollar and tries to bring them new life. It’s an ethical problem of an underappreciate magnitude. So many drugs that would have been of use to society are cast aside. Certain drugs have gone by the wayside for reasons that have nothing to do with their underlying merits.

Various field have been largely ignored by biopharma and we have a real opportunity here to draw attention to it, to get investment in this space and really start to welcome innovative therapies for women with these diseases

Use fresh funding to launch new companies outside of traditional biopharmaceutical development.

Attract world-class talent in its pursuit of developing and commercialising drugs that target large unmet medical needs.

the long tail

knowledge pyramid

comp. stages

pitch decks

- psychologically, it is easier to make the reader focus on the things he needs to be focused on. In decks, it's the numbers.

- make it clear what the venture does and why a potential investor should read on.

- numbers, growth, and profits are the foundation and emotional peak of any deck.

network effect

scaling

launch, growth, constraint zone, scale

“The greatest predictor of a company’s ability to SCALE, is the leader’s willingness to ADAPT.”

retreating back into growth

zeno's paradox

zeno argued that a swift runner like Achilles cannot overtake a slower moving tortoise with a head start, because the distance between them can be infinitely subdivided, implying Achilles would require an infinite number of steps to catch the tortoise.

law

sue early, sue often.	sign definitive agreements.
SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a contract between a service provider and a customer outlining the expected level of service, performance metrics, and responsibilities.

hiring

the way to poach people from other firms is to highlight to them that they are wasting their lives were they currently are and that they are real big problems that need saving in the world that they aren’t apart of.

incremental improvement

brailsford believed in a concept that he referred to as the “aggregation of marginal gains.” he explained it as “the one percent margin for improvement in everything you do.” his belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just one percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.

big leaders

identify the big ideas.	enforce tough execution against those big ideas.
grow the next generation of leaders.	weed out all incongruences*

profitable loss

where incurring a loss leads to greater overall profitability in the long run. (for instance, if a company invests in research and development (R&D) or new technology that initially results in a financial loss but ultimately leads to increased efficiency, cost savings, or revenue generation in the future.)

lean six sigma

a process improvement strategy that seeks to eliminate inefficiencies in a company's process flow by identifying the causes of waste or redundancy and developing solutions to address them.

managing people

collaborative company.	no committees; like a startup.
teamwork; trust.	arguments must be enabled; that's how you keep great people.

"if you wanna hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to be run by ideas not hierarchy. the best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don't stay."*

“teamwork is dependent on trusting the other team members to come through with their part without watching them al the time "**

lean thinking

it's not a proxy of your seriousness that you filled every minute in your schedule.