RL69: Startup Strategy Frameworks

TLDR: Strategy is like catnip for MBAs. It's important, but overhyped IMO

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This week’s post is another installment where I take you behind the scenes in launching a new product.

Before we jump in - a quick update on shifting this to a paid newsletter:

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• Moving to a paid format has had an unexpected positive impact. I stopped treating this newsletter like something I did for free and started giving it the attention it deserves.

  • This is an important point as I begin writing about the strategy for our new product below. Charging for a service you provide requires you to put it more effort to create something you’re proud of.

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Strategy - like catnip for MBAs

Strategy is a word that’s thrown around in business, and I honestly think it’s catnip for MBAs.

Don’t believe me? This photo is from a McKinsey consulting case helping a F500 company think through their strategy -

Note the MBA exposing his belly - a sign of submission to the client & the almighty power of strategy.

Humor aside - at Wharton, almost every class focused on strategic decisions - how to position a company in changing markets, where to commit capital, who has a competitive advantage and what can they do differently because of it?

I love strategy, but if I’m honest, I believe too many entrepreneurs overindex on strategy and underindex on doing.

The legendary business strategist, Peter Drucker, once said -

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

-Peter Drucker

With startups, execution eats strategy for breakfast.

That said, it’s pointless to ‘win’ a market that’s not attractive, so it’s well worth our time to dive deep on why this product strategy makes sense (or doesn’t).

In startups, there are elements of strategy that are critical -

1. Picking a great market

2. Think about competition

3. Solving an important pain point

4. Targeting a customer who can pay

5. Starting with a narrowly defined niche and expanding from there

Strategy is defined as -

a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim

In the Marine Corps, we were always taught to start with the end in mind, so let’s begin there…

Starting with The End in Mind

When we first launched TheMilVet, we focused on a problem - transitioning out of the military sucks.

We learned that it sucks because you lose:

• Your sense of identity/purpose

• Your community/tribe

• A stable job

We started by focusing on the 3rd issue - helping veterans find employment.

We’ve learned that there’s a serious pain point that we can impact through our work as a headhunting agency and our in-person events.

While hosting our in-person events, we noticed that we’re pretty effective at problem #2 as well - creating community and tribe.

Attendees for our in-person events rave about what it’s like to be in a room of veterans discussing how they’ll grow in business and life (see hundreds of testimonials here).

We know these in-person events solve the ‘tribe’ problem, but we don’t do them frequently enough to sustain the relationships and continue solving the problem.

In an Ideal World…

In an ideal world, we would host much more frequent events to provide community for veterans.

Historically, veterans relied on the VFW and the American Legion to create community and camaraderie, but those organizations have withered by continuing to focus on 20th-century vets rather than post-9/11 veterans.

We’re a small, scrappy startup with a handful of people on staff and launching an organization to fill the void left by these non-profits is a lofty goal with an incredible series of challenges to address.

Before we look at the ‘how’, let’s take a look at the strategic considerations around building a product with the express purpose of building community for veterans.

We’ll look at:

• Market

• Competition

• Needs of the Customer / Pain Point

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