In Setting milestones & priorities, I talk about how we operationalize priorities, starting with our Vision, Mision & Strategy doc. I read all sorts of resources to find a framework and outline that felt right.

At the end, it comes down to a very simple structure. But simple is hard so it honestly took me a while to get there!

Here’s an in depth look into the structure of that doc (and an outline + template to copy!)

• Vision and Mission
• Mission
• Vision
• Target Audience
• Primary Focus
• Near Future
• Strategy
• 3 Areas
• Anti-Priorities
• Rationale
• Differentiators & Moats
• Moats
• Competition Differentiation
• Goals & Tactics
• Goals
• Timeline & Tactics
• Notes & References

Vision and Mission

These should not change for a year or so

Mission

• What are we trying to achieve?

PLX: To make the movement of money, anywhere as affordable, quick and simple as possible

Vision

• What does the world look like when we achieved it?

PLX: Redefined financial access for the borderless world leveraging crypto, especially for those who need it the most

Target Audience

Specifically who are you building for?

Primary Focus

• Who is the prime target today

PLX: Remote workers, freelancers, business owners (with more info in geography focus, and value props they care about)

Near Future

• Who’s up next?

PLX: Secret 🙂

Strategy

What’s the plan to achieve our mission or win?

3 Areas

• 3 Pillars or Area of focus. 3 only! Focus!
• Make this catchy!

PLX: Ours has the starting letters spelling out P L X (our internal nickname for Parallax)

Anti-Priorities

• What are saying NOT YET to?

Rationale

• A deeper explanation (for the readers!) as to what makes the strategy strong. According to “Good Strategy vs. Bad Strategy”

Differentiators & Moats

What moats do we build over time? What makes it hard for anyone to come in and replicate what we are doing? How do you compare across competitors?

Moats

• We break down 4 main moats that make us strong against incumbents and other startups.

Competition Differentiation

• Choose your visual of choice. For us, this is a table with competitors on the left, and each column signifying what competitors do or don’t have.

Goals & Tactics

Goals: How will we measure progress? Tactics: What do we need to build to get there?

Goals

• This breaks down into 2 core goals (at the seed stage)
• GTM goal
• Product goal

PLX: At a high level, we need to

1. grow efficiently with XYZ LTV:CAC ratio + XYZ MAU growth goals)
2. have strong demand (XYZ ARR, XYZ volume)

Timeline & Tactics

• A rough, working idea of what we will and could be building per quarter and the growth milestones per quarter that we need to achieve based on a forecast

Notes & References

A dump of info or more in-depth analyses in the process of creating the doc, for the avid reader and analyzer!

Anything to improve with the above? Drop me a note!