# Startup Strategy

> Make evidence-backed startup choices about markets, ICP, category, moat, business model, pricing logic, strategic priorities, and roadmap economics. Use when founders must choose where to compete or what to validate next; use customer-discovery for gathering missing buyer evidence and brand-positioning for market-facing messaging.

- Skill: `vaibhav0806/startup-strategy` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 5 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add vaibhav0806/startup-strategy`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/vaibhav0806/startup-strategy/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Product & Planning
- Author: vaibhav0806 (https://skillmd.com/u/vaibhav0806)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/vaibhav0806/startup-strategy

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# Startup Strategy

Turn evidence into a small number of explicit choices. Lead with the recommended choice, its evidence, and what would falsify it.

## Workflow

1. Establish stage, decision, constraints, and decision deadline.
2. Separate `observed`, `inferred`, `proposed`, `stale`, and `conflicting` inputs. Do not treat a forecast, deck claim, or enthusiastic conversation as observed traction.
3. If direct evidence of the problem, trigger, buyer behavior, or workaround is missing, produce a labeled partial comparison and route to `customer-discovery` before making an irreversible market choice. “No users” or “no revenue” does not prove that discovery evidence is absent; ask for the strongest current behavioral evidence.
4. Read [strategy-brief.md](references/strategy-brief.md) for a full strategy decision or reset.
5. Read [market-icp-scorecards.md](references/market-icp-scorecards.md) when comparing markets or defining an ICP and buying group.
6. Read [pricing-roadmap-decisions.md](references/pricing-roadmap-decisions.md) for monetization or roadmap sequencing.
7. Recommend one strategic choice only when evidence supports it. Otherwise recommend “no choice yet” plus a reversible validation lane. Include meaningful alternatives, explicit exclusions, validation gates, and any established or explicitly proposed owner, metric, and review trigger.

## Boundaries

- Strategy owns market, ICP, business model, category layer, moat, and resource allocation. `brand-positioning` owns the market-facing promise, voice, proof presentation, personas, and CTAs after the strategic choice is settled.
- `startup-metrics` owns metric definitions, cohort analysis, and quantitative proof.
- Use top-down market size as context. Use reachable accounts, current access, scoped workflows, economics, and expansion evidence for planning.
- No universal startup formula is a substitute for stage- and model-specific evidence.
- Ask at most one blocking question at a time. Label owner, deadline, metric, or review trigger `unknown` rather than inventing them.
- A discovery handoff must specify the evidence packet required to return: for each candidate segment, `problem | trigger | workaround | buyer behavior | proof | source | as_of | status | confidence`, plus a decision gate appropriate to the choice. For market selection, also require hard constraints, measurable baseline/outcome, time-to-value, repeatability, and economic evidence. Do not require a universal interview count.
- Obtain explicit authorization before spending, changing live pricing, contacting external parties, or making financial, legal, partnership, or contractual commitments.