It’s only become popular in recent history to be an entrepreneur. I remember when looks of dread or confusion would wash across a person’s face when you gave yourself the title of ‘Founder’.

Nowadays it seems to be getting a flair of prestige to be called a founder. Which will only make it harder for those die hard passionate types. As you’ll be competing in a scene that’s full of noisy “Idea People” and “Glory Seekers”.

Operationalizing Startup Stratagem

Let’s get started by defining what a startup is.

Clarity is the consensus of naming something, then a general definition and finally the unit to measure it by and the tool to do said measuring.

For a startup we will operationalize it within the context of Eric Reis.

A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. –Eric Ries

For another definition we go to Eric’s guiding thought leader Steve Blank.

A startup is a temporary organization used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.–Steve Blank

And so with two examples we see that a startup is not a true business. We should not treat it as such either. Divisions, departments and guidebooks do not exist.

In a startup there is uncertainty. Major companies have thousands of data points to structure their decisions on. Most startups, if constructed around a unique value has little. They struggle to even define just what they are trying to do. The less unique companies, and thus less value to offer, can give themselves defining points and terms such as Uber for Something.

What about stratagem?

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.–Sun Tzu

Or we can go with

a plan or scheme used to achieve an end.

So we’re developing plans to find a scalable way to deliver value to others while repeatedly capturing a little piece of that value for ourselves (the more unique the value we can offer the more we can capture of course). We’re starting at a point of high uncertainty in almost everything to include our end solution.