Change the Rules of the Game
When the game is rigged against you, don't optimize — invent a new model.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
When the market turns structurally against your business, incremental optimization fails; the move is to sit in your customer's shoes and redesign the model itself — the pricing cadence, the employment structure, the rules of the game. Mansuri's test: 'you can't optimize your way out of a problem,' so take bigger swings and change the rules instead.
Origin
Sahil Mansuri's account of launching Bravado Flex when the recruiting marketplace slowed in 2022, plus his pricing-cadence examples.
Core principles
- 01Companies either grow or die — there is no 'just survive the winter' middle ground
- 02You can't optimize your way out of a problem; minor tweaks (e.g. cutting price 12k to 10k) won't save a broken model
- 03Put yourself in your buyer's exact situation and ask what they actually need now
- 04A model that made no sense before can be exactly right once supply/demand shifts
- 05Even if the new model doesn't last, running the experiment teaches you something new about your market
How to run it
- 1
Sit in the buyer's shoes at the whiteboard
Adopt your customer's current constraints literally — e.g. 'I want new customers but can't afford full-time salespeople and might have to lay off my team' — and ask what would actually help.
- 2
Identify the rule that's now stacked against you
Name the structural shift working against you (no money to hire, more candidates than roles) that no amount of effort changes.
Pro tip Stop bashing your head against preconceived notions of what success looks like — the constraint is structural, not effort-based.
- 3
Redesign the model, not the margins
Invent a new structure that fits the new equilibrium — Bravado created a 100%-commission-only / fractional sales model (Bravado Flex) that made no sense a year earlier.
Pro tip Try radically different pricing cadence too: instead of $12k/year, charge $1k/month, or $20/day, day by day.
Watch out Don't optimize — reducing $12k to $10k or making minor changes when the whole model is broken is asinine.
- 4
Take the bigger swing and learn from it
Launch the new model even if uncertain it lasts, and harvest what it teaches you about your audience.
In the wild
With its full-time recruiting marketplace slumping, Bravado stopped trying to sell the old product and instead matched sales reps who couldn't find full-time work with companies that wanted customers but couldn't hire — via 100% commission, contract-to-hire, or fractional arrangements. They also discovered reps preferred fractional work across multiple companies.
→ Bravado went from a massive drag on the business to one of the best months in company history, with the following month projected higher, while learning its audience actively preferred the fractional model.
Common mistakes
Optimizing minor levers on a broken model
Shaving price from $12k to $10k or tweaking around the edges when the fundamental model no longer works wastes effort — you have to change the rules, not the margins.
Adopting a 'just survive' mentality
Cutting burn to merely hold on demoralizes employees, drains investor faith, and eventually exhausts the business's energy, because startups run on belief and momentum, not stasis.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders whose core business model has been structurally undercut by a market shift and who need a new go-to-market or pricing model to keep growing.
Not ideal for
Businesses whose fundamentals are intact and only need tactical tuning — a full model change would be needless disruption.
From the transcript
“you can't optimize your way out of a problem you got to completely change the rules of the game and in doing so you suddenly…”
“what if we created a 100 commission only sales role it doesn't exist today in SAS”
“overnight we went from you know having a massive sled on our business to one of the best months that we've ever had in company…”
“companies either grow or they die there's no middle ground”
From the episode
How to hit revenue targets in a recession
Sahil Mansuri (Bravado)