Vocabulary Bank

the monthly cash consumption of an unprofitable initiative, and the clock against which any milestone is priced

a competitor whose economics allow a lower price and a different served customer, and whose share, once compounding, is rarely reversed

'will be + -ing' — the tense that commits to the state of the team without over-committing to a ship date

the tense that lets a disruptor commit, in writing, to a completed action three years out — and thereby forces defunding decisions now

the moment an H3 project moves out of the factory and into an operating unit

a transformational bet on a new market, priced on a clock the H1 metrics cannot see

the practice, harder than it sounds, of keeping a transformational bet off H1 metrics for long enough to reach its own payoff

the analytical distinction between core (H1), adjacent (H2) and transformational (H3) bets, each on its own clock

the smallest configuration of the offer that a real customer will pay for and give usable feedback on

an H3 bet whose payoff is a decade out and whose value is destroyed by H1 metrics

'we are working on, we are exploring' — the tense a company that has stopped shipping tends to write in

the incumbent's default — describing what the company is doing rather than what it will have shipped

the dated sequence of what the company intends to have in customers' hands, and when

the multi-stage funnel of research bets moving from discovery through development to commercial launch

the future-continuous commitment to being, three years out, in a market that today does not yet exist

the pre-agreed month a legacy product line stops being sold or supported, freeing capital for the next bet

the elapsed months between the decision to build and the moment a paying customer can transact

the future-continuous commitment to the shape of the team, without a ship date to the quarter

the future-perfect commitment that defines a defunded-from-now completion