StartUp Founders: 2025 Strategy

Dear Reader,

This one’s for all the founders heading into 2025 thinking your strategy will unfold naturally, as a sequence of inevitable events. It won’t.

I’m just asking you to clearly articulate your objective and how you intend to hit it, it’s a very reasonable question….

There are four types of founders on December 1st:

1. Those winging it with random acts of execution believing they are following a plan.
2. Those carrying a strategy in their head, trusting a brain notoriously bad at managing task lists.
3. Those who think strategy is 10 minutes and an Asana subscription.
4. Those who know that ambitious goals require breaking them into micro-components, writing them down and relentlessly executing.

I don’t need to ask which one you are. Hello to all my (a) and (b) founders out there. It doesn’t work. Never has. Never will.

Your brain is great for ideas but awful for execution. It lies to you. It tells you the next thing is obvious, that you won’t forget, but you do.

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Eisenhower

HYPER RELATED:

Every startup founder has, is, or will feel it. The gap between all the work you’ve done and the results you’re waiting for. It’s awful. It’s universal. It’s “The Dip.“

LETS GET INTO IT:

I’m not suggesting you plan the year. Maybe just 3-6 months out, but, to repeat, it’s not unreasonable to expect you to have clarity on your objective and a map of what it takes to hit it.

I hear you….

“I’m not the strategy type.”
“It’s just me and a dev in Slack.”
“Why would I write a strategy just to read it back to myself?”
“I know what I need to do. Writing it down takes me out of beast mode.”

Writing down your plan isn’t just documentation; it’s about clarifying your thinking, the process itself is where the magic happens.

If you can’t write it down clearly, you don’t actually know what you’re doing. And if you don’t know what you’re doing and can’t articulate it, how can you expect your employees, your contractors, your potential investors, or your prospects to?

“A problem written down is a problem half solved.” Taleb.

Strategy is just breaking down your big goal into achievable steps. Then actually writing it down. Then actually doing it.

Four Levels of Planning:

1. Vision (12 Months): Your north star. Ambitious yet achievable. Come this time next year, where do I want to be.
2. Strategy (6 Months): The roadmap to that vision. The milestones, dependencies, and resources required. Most founders fail here and skip straight from vision to the playbook.
3. Execution (90 Days): The battleground. What’s happening this quarter, month, week that gets us one step closer to our objective.
4. Atomic Playbook (Weekly Actions): Tiny, consistent steps taken every week that compounds towards your goal. The 3-5 things you can do every week to make progress inevitable?

Every strategy must include the Atomic Playbook, the weekly actions you take to ensure your progress compounds. Don’t confuse it with a task list, it’s not, it’s your system to ensure you know exactly what you should be doing.

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

Why Most Strategies Fail

1. Arrogance.​
   You just believe you are fast enough, strong enough, quick enough, and great enough to brute force your way into making something you cannot even articulate happen. Overconfidence in the absence of clarity is bananas.
2. Not Written Down.​
   Your brain is for having ideas, not storing them. Write. It. Down.
3. Vague.​
   “Growth” isn’t a strategy. “Increase sales” isn’t a strategy. If you can’t answer who, what, and by when, it’s just an idea.
4. Ignore Dependencies.​
   Goals have prerequisites. Milestones have dependencies. Map them out or prep for the inevitable roadblocks.
5. Not Measurable.​
   If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it, if you can’t track it, you can’t fix it when it breaks. And it always breaks.

​Not A Strategy Template, But The OPPM Might Help….

The “Let’s Start Somewhere” Strategy

For founders who don’t think they need a strategy or don’t know where to start.

Start simple. Start actionable. Start here:

1. One Clear Objective: What’s the ONE thing that must happen in the next 6 months? Not three things. Not five things. One.
2. Three Key Results: Measurable milestones that prove you’re on track. If these don’t happen, the objective won’t happen.
3. Critical Dependencies: What has to be true for this to work? What resources, people, or conditions need to exist?
4. Atomic Actions: What 3-5 small, repeatable steps can you take weekly that will compound toward your objective?

When market conditions change (they will), when customer needs evolve (they do), and when assumptions prove to be wrong (they always do), your strategy is the framework for adaptation vs reactive prayer.

So. Start writing something. Today….

As always, if I can be of service, feel free to grab time.

LFG.

— James

(LinkedIn | Tiktok | Twitter)​