A phrase that gets thrown around without much weight
“Strategy” is one of those words people use to make ordinary decisions sound more important.
Founders talk about their content strategy, their pricing strategy, their AI strategy, their go-to-market strategy. Most of the time, “strategy” here just means “the things we’ve decided to do.” That’s not really what strategy is.
A real strategy answers a harder question: given everything we know about our users, our market, and ourselves, what are we choosing to focus on — and what are we choosing not to do — to give this product the best chance of working?
Done well, strategy is the quiet backbone of everything else. Done badly, it’s a list of activities dressed up in business language.
Let’s be specific about what the real version looks like.
...
