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<aside> 💡 A startup is a way to radically change the future. Any company is the sum of its employees' knowledge. The way to radically change the future is to acquire radically new knowledge.

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The better your knowledge about clients, tasks, solutions, technologies, etc. – the better your startup adapts to changing circumstances. The more unique this knowledge is – the more immense leverage it provides.

Generally, there are three types of knowledge that a startup can leverage:

– about challenges people face

– on how to improve already existing solution

– or how to solve existing challenges in a new way

Here are some examples.

🎡 Airbnb, during the COVID, leveraged the knowledge about the challenges people faced and introduced 'local attractions' with a tagline: "Amazing things are nearby". That helped people who couldn't fly anywhere to catch a break and spend some quality time in their relative neighbourhood.

🚕 Uber used their knowledge to introduce a new quality for the existing solution: "We reimagine the way the world moves for the better". From there on, you could choose rides and track them in real-time, elevating the quality of the service in the end.

🍋 HelloFresh re-examined what is needed to make a nice supper and decided to "Take the stress out of mealtime". Their solution offered a new approach with guaranteed ingredient quality, precise quantities, reduced food waste, and a wider variety of recipes – all at your doorstep, saving your precision time on visits to a grocery store.

As I mentioned in the previous post, robust unit economics is also essential knowledge – any startup is deemed to fail without it.

In the next post, I'll talk about the role of Product Managers and how these ultimate knowledge workers are responsible for acquiring and exploiting critical knowledge needed for any startup, company or product to succeed.

Next post: Product Manager as an Ultimate Knowledge Worker