Playbook

We take an extreme form of Amazon’s two pizza teams to build our Ventures. Our teams are loosely coupled partnerships of vendors and contractors coordinated on WhatsApp. Amazon culturally was created before the iPhone and had a very in person view of the world. A better view of the world now would be that an ideal company is one where you can run an entire business off a WhatsApp group.

We build businesses that have the following characteristics:

• Serve the World. Build things that help better the world.
• Domain Expertise. Build ventures with others who can bring in their expertise.
• Low Cost. Use technology and automation to drive down cost across every part of the business.

The method we have is threefold:

1. Operations Template.
2. Team Template.
3. PR/FAQ Template. Press Release, FAQ, and 7 Powers, Deming. Stored and updated in the repo.

Operations Template

Our operations is focused on low cost and high automation. We minimize the tools people use and force everything to run within the following tools:

• Github. We run the entire operation through Github. Running the venture within a monorepo.
  • Issues. All tasks are tracked in Github issues.
  • Actions. All automation is run through Github actions.
  • Code. All code is stored in Github.
    • api. The backend code.
    • www. The frontend code.
    • infra. The terraform code.
    • Makefile. The makefile that runs the entire operation.
• WhatsApp. Communication for collaboration. WhatsApp because it is the most used.
• Third-Party Distribution. Launch using third party marketplaces.

Team Template

Organize into three groups.

Group	Description
Revenue	Sales, Marketing and Partnerships.
Support	Customer Support and Coding.
Ledger	People and Finance.

PR/FAQ Template

Press Release

Heading: Name the product in a way the reader (i.e. your target customers) will understand. One sentence under the title.

Subheading: Describe the customer for the product and what benefits they will gain from using it. One sentence only underneath the Heading.

Summary Paragraph: Start with the city, media outlet, and your proposed launch date. Give a summary of the product and the benefit.

Problem Paragraph: This is where you describe the problem that your product is designed to solve. Make sure that you write this paragraph from the customer’s point of view.

Solution Paragraph(s): Describe your product in some detail and how it simply and easily solves the customer’s problem. For more complex products, you may need more than one paragraph.

Quotes & Getting Started: Add one quote from you or your company’s spokesperson and a second quote from a hypothetical customer in which they describe the benefit they are getting from using your new product. Describe how easy it is to get started, and provide a link to your website where customers can get more information and get started.

External FAQ

Internal FAQ

Q: What happens if a customer encounters x? How does the product deal with use case x? (there are likely to be several such questions).

Q: What are the challenging product engineering problems we will need to solve?

Q: What are the challenging customer UI problems we will need to solve?

Q: How will we manage the risk of the upfront investment required?

Q: Do we have any third-party dependencies to build this product? If so, what are they and why will they be willing to partner with us (what is in it for them)?

Q: What third-party technologies are we dependent on to function properly for x to work as promised?

Q: Are there any potential regulatory or legal issues to consider?

Q: What are the per-unit economics of the product? That is, what is our expected Gross Profit and Contribution profit per unit?

Q: What is the rationale for the price point you have chosen for the product?

Q: How much will we have to invest up front to build this product in terms of people, technology, inventory, warehouse space, etc.?

Q: What/who are the current competitors for this product?

7 Powers

The 7 Powers framework is one of the clearest definitions of strategy that I found that has clear areas of focus. While other frameworks have a competitor focus there is a clear notion of building moats with the 7 Power framework. A competitive framework like SWOT analysis, Porter’s Competitive Strategy, etc. answer narrow definitions but don’t then go into the various areas that you need to implement that strategy to succeed. From a Porter’s Competitive Strategy standpoint we want to be the low cost producer within a broad market. How we get there is using the 7 Powers framework.

• Scale economies: A business in which per unit cost declines as production volume increases.
• Network economies. The value of a service to each user increases as new users join the network.
• Counter-positioning. A newcomer adopts a new, superior business model which the incumbent does not mimic due to anticipated damage to their existing business.
• Switching costs. The value loss expected by a customer that would be incurred from switching to an alternative supplier for additional purchases.
• Branding. The durable attribution of higher value to an objectively identical offering that arises from historic info about the seller.
• Cornered resource. Preferential access at attractive terms to a coveted asset that can independently enhance value.
• Process power. Embedded company organisation and activity sets which enable lower costs and/or superior product.