Etsy

Adjacency-and-Network Expansion Test

Prioritize marketplace expansion by adjacency and network reinforcement, not by the size of the adjacent TAM

Marketing5 steps

Close the Loop: Intent-Signal Retention Engine

Turn every low-commitment user signal into a trigger you can legitimately fire later.

Context and Outcome over Pain and Gain

Study the context that makes the irrational rational, not just the pain to be relieved.

Finance3 steps

Dual-Sided ROI Equation

Price each acquisition to include the cost of acquiring the other side it needs, then push to your payback threshold

Happy GMV and Minimum Viable Happiness

Track only the GMV that produced a retained customer, and boil the thimble until it clears the bar

Productivity3 steps

Homogenize the Early Experience for Retention

Move retention by fixing unlucky bad first experiences, not by nudging people about to churn

KPI + Narrative: The Two-Part Turnaround Drumbeat

Pair one north-star KPI with one relentlessly repeated narrative to reset how a company works.

Magic Lenses

Evaluate competing implementation paths by plotting each through the eyes of the advisers you wish you had

Markets as Currents, Not Bodies of Water

Chase the change dynamic pulling the market, not the size of the market

Leadership4 steps

Patience vs Process Diagnostic

When something's stalling, know whether it needs more patience or a process intervention

Marketing4 steps

Signals and Nudges for Choice Under Abundance

When every result is plausible, confidence beats relevance — surface glanceable signals, not more inventory.

Communication6 steps

The Constructive Feedback Script

Deliver hard feedback with observable facts, shared-knowledge framing, and one clear leave-with action

The Design Sprint Scorecard

Break your founding hypothesis into rows and grade each one red/yellow/green after head-to-head customer tests

The Differentiation 2x2 (Escape Loserville)

Plot two customer-facing differentiators you can prove and own the top-right; the other three quadrants are Loserville

The Five-Legged Stool

Product, eng, design, insights, and marketing as one leadership team — with the PM accountable, not king.

Entrepreneurship5 steps

The Foundation Sprint

A 10-hour, 3-phase team sprint that turns a vague startup idea into one testable founding hypothesis

Entrepreneurship5 steps

The Founder Prenup

Talk through values, vision, conflict, decisions, and culture before you co-found

Entrepreneurship3 steps

The Founding Hypothesis (Mad Libs Strategy Sentence)

Compress your entire startup strategy into one testable fill-in-the-blank sentence — then go prove it

Innovation5 steps

The Four Forces of Progress

Model demand as a tug-of-war: two forces push people to switch, two hold them back.

The Four Marketplace Health Metrics

Track GMV, unit economics, liquidity, and share of wallet to know if a marketplace is truly healthy

Mindset3 steps

The Gardener Mindset for Marketplaces

Run a marketplace like a gardener with a light touch, not a construction worker building linear features

Strategy6 steps

The Growth Model Building Blocks

Build a spreadsheet formula of how your business grows, layer by layer, to find your real levers

The Hierarchy of Engagement

Three stacked levels — core action, accruing benefits, self-perpetuation — that decide if a consumer product endures

Entrepreneurship5 steps

The Hierarchy of Marketplaces

Focus, tip, dominate — the only sequence that produces a marketplace worth owning

Marketing4 steps

The JTBD Switch Interview

Interrogate the story of a real purchase to recover the true causes of a switch.

Strategy3 steps

The Marketplace Fragmentation Test

A marketplace only works if the market is fragmented and the per-transaction dollars are small enough to keep it in the middle

Communication5 steps

The Personal Operating Manual

A working-style 'read me' so teammates know how to work with you before friction starts

The Pre-Firing 'Crystal Clear' Conversation

Before you fire anyone, have the deal-breaker conversation that makes firing never a surprise

The Promotion-Denial Conversation

Deliver the no upfront, give the reasons, then paint hope for the future

The Provenance Gate: Scaling Supply Without Diluting the Brand

Let sellers scale by outsourcing production — but only to a partner whose process they actually know.

Sales4 steps

The Six Phases of the Buying Timeline

Meet buyers where they are on their timeline instead of forcing them onto yours.

Productivity4 steps

The Three Questions to End Every Meeting

Close every meeting with: what did we decide, who does what by when, and who else needs to know

Marketing4 steps

The Three Sources of Energy

Every purchase draws on functional, emotional, and social energy, not just utility.

The Tippability Test

Check supply fragmentation, supply heterogeneity and incumbent competition before you fund a marketplace

The Transaction Tiebreaker for Marketplace Prioritization

Stop arguing supply vs demand — make the transaction itself the thing every team is accountable to.

Productivity4 steps

The Weekly Focus Ritual

Post what you're focused on this week, and whether last week's focus actually landed.

Three Ways to Find Marketplace Whitespace

Unbundle a low-NPS segment, own an ignored niche, or change the atomic unit of supply

Marketing5 steps

Tipping Loops: Growth Loops and Happiness Loops

Two symbiotic loop types — one grows the marketplace, one keeps it happy as it grows

Productivity4 steps

Top-Down / Bottoms-Up Core Action Analysis

Cross two analyses — return-propensity ranking and product purpose — to find the one action worth optimising

Strategy3 steps

Vertical Unbundling Criteria

Only carve a vertical out of a horizontal marketplace if it has high value or frequency and a self-contained network

Communication4 steps

Work Alone Together (Note-and-Vote)

Replace group brainstorms with silent individual idea generation, a quiet vote, and one designated decider