Innovation Unpacked | Mike Boysen

Mike Boysen
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Mike Boysen shares insights into the evolution of First Principles and Jobs-to-be-Done, especially in the age of Generative AI. He makes the previously secret process more accessible new approaches and automated tools that vastly reduce the time, effort, and cost of doing what the large enterprises have been investing in for years. This will be especially interesting for the earlier stage, smaller enterprises, and those investing in them who have always had to rely on a superstar, or guess (or maybe that's the same thing!). So...check it out! www.jtbd.one

  1. 1d ago

    Strategy ROI: Can You Show Your CFO What Last Year’s Strategy Bought?

    Most leaders can’t show what last year’s strategy bought, usually because the plan never said which number it would change. That’s a fixable problem. But you want to fix it before your CFO asks, not after. Here’s the setup. The 2027 plan is due. Finance is asking harder questions about every big bet. Someone says, “What did the strategy work from last year actually deliver?” If your answer is a slide deck, you have a problem. This piece covers what the research shows about where strategy value goes missing, and what a budget holder can do about it this quarter. Only about half of strategic initiatives succeed, by executives’ own count In a survey of senior executives for the Project Management Institute, respondents said that, on average, just 56% of their strategic initiatives were successful over the last three years. Also, 61% said their firms often struggle to bridge the gap between strategy and day-to-day work. Only 11% disagreed. (PMI, Why Good Strategies Fail) Read that again. Those are senior executives. They’re telling you that close to half of what they fund doesn’t land. There’s one honest caution. A review of the research in the Journal of Management & Organization found that the often-quoted claim that 50% to 90% of strategic initiatives fail is shaky. The studies behind it are old, thin, or missing. The review found estimates ranging from 7% to 90%, and said the true rate is still unknown. (Journal of Management & Organization) So don’t tell your board “90% of strategies fail.” You can’t back it up, and a CFO will check. What you can say is simpler: nobody knows the real rate, and that’s the point. If the industry can’t measure it, your company probably isn’t measuring it either. The number in the plan shrinks before it reaches the books McKinsey looked at 18 transformation programs at 13 organizations in Asia and the Pacific. These were large organizations. The team found that the value estimate for an initiative fell by about 45% between the first estimate and the approved business case. By the time the value showed up in cash flow, the first estimate had usually fallen by about 70%. (McKinsey, Keeping transformations on target) McKinsey’s advice is plain. Build a pipeline worth more than three times the target, because a lot of the value drops out along the way. The same article repeats an earlier finding that only 30% of transformations deliver their intended benefits and hit the targets set at the start. That figure is about large change programs, not every strategy. For a budget holder, the lesson is direct. The number in the first pitch is a hope. The number in the cash flow is a fact. Your CFO cares about the second one. Even successful programs miss about a third of the benefit McKinsey also surveyed executives about their transformations. Those who called their transformation a success said they captured about 67% of the maximum financial benefit. Everyone else said they captured about 37%. (McKinsey, Why even successful transformations fall short) Now the part that matters most for planning. Respondents said nearly one-quarter of the lost value happened while the targets were being set. That’s before the work even started. Another 20% was lost after the work was done. So the leak isn’t only in the doing. It starts with a vague target, and it continues after the project is “finished,” when nobody is watching the number anymore. Most tracking is noise When a plan does have metrics, they’re often too many to use. In the McKinsey review of 18 transformations, only 29% of the metrics that organizations said they followed were actually used while the work ran. The rest became noise. (McKinsey, Keeping transformations on target) That’s why a long dashboard doesn’t save you. Your CFO doesn’t want a long list of numbers. Your CFO wants the one or two that say whether the bet worked. Five questions your CFO will ask, and how to have answers Here’s what to be ready for. Each one has a short answer you can build now. What did we spend, and where did it go? Pull the full list of work funded under last year’s strategy. Put the amount next to each item. If you can’t tie spend to a named initiative, say so and fix it first. What was each piece supposed to change? Write one sentence per initiative: this was meant to move this number, by this much, by this date. If the original plan never said that, mark it “no target set.” That’s honest, and it tells you where the leak started. What actually changed? Use the finance team’s numbers, not a project status color. Green on a slide isn’t green in the books. What would have happened if we’d done nothing? This is the hard one. Without it, every win looks like a win and every miss looks like bad luck. Even a rough baseline is better than none. What do we do next with the money? Every initiative gets one of three labels: fund more, fix, or kill. Not “continue.” Why a story alone won’t hold up Plenty of firms will hand you a story about your strategy. It will sound smart. It will have a framework and a nice chart. But a story with no data behind it can’t answer the CFO’s first question, which is “Where did the money go?” My approach is the other way around. I start with real data, reach a decision, and then build the story that backs the decision. The decision comes first because that’s what a budget holder has to defend. I’ve worked at several strategy consultancies, including one known for its Jobs-to-be-Done method. That’s where I learned to tell strategy that can be checked from strategy that can only be admired. I only trust the first kind, and it’s the only kind I sell. What to do this month You don’t need a big program. You need three moves before the 2027 plan goes to the board. * List every strategic bet from last year. One line each. Owner, spend, intended result, actual result. * Mark each one fund, fix, or kill. Be willing to cut. A bet that can’t show a result after a year should have to earn its next round. * Write the target for each new bet before it gets a budget. One number, one date, one owner. If it can’t be written, the bet isn’t ready. Do those three things and you walk into the CFO’s office with answers instead of a deck. If you want your team to run this check on every bet, not just once, that’s what the Innovation Unpacked Mastermind teaches: how to start from real data, reach a decision, and build the story that backs it. See the Innovation Unpacked Mastermind Want to run fund, fix, or kill on your own bets this week? Prove It Before You Build It, the Venture Proof Workbook and Template Pack, gives you the templates. Get the Workbook and Template Pack If this is the bet on your desk, we can go through it together and land on fund, fix or kill. Book a call Sources: PMI, Journal of Management & Organization, McKinsey (2017), McKinsey (2021) Book an appointment: Click hereEmail me: mike@pjtbd.comCall me: +1 678-824-2789Follow me on 𝕏: https://x.com/mikeboysenArticles - jtbd.one - De-Risk Your Next Big IdeaWebsite - pjtbd.com Slaying the Sacred Cows of Innovation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

    Strategy ROI: Can You Show Your CFO What Last Year’s Strategy Bought?

  2. Oct 26

    You Paid for Full Self-Driving. The Person Next to You Got It Free.

    A lot of Tesla owners have had the same strange moment. They paid thousands of dollars for Full Self-Driving, often years ago, because they were told the price was going up. Then, a few years later, a new owner got to try the same software for free. After that, the new owner could keep it for a monthly fee. In the video, I walked through why that happened and what it teaches. Here I want to go deeper. You’ll get the full price history with sources, the psychology behind urgency pricing, how it backfires, what Tesla got right, and a checklist you can use before you set your own deadline. I’ll be fair to Tesla throughout. Each pricing move made business sense when it happened. The lesson isn’t that Tesla is bad at pricing. It’s that urgency pricing locks you in more than it looks like it does. The lever: urgent, not nurture This comes from the set of subtractive levers I use in Venture Proof. Venture Proof is a powerful, disruptive strategy-as-code engine I built. It builds and tests your strategy with code, so every step runs the same way and can be checked. It tests business ideas, and then makes them better. A subtractive lever is a way to improve something by taking something away. Lever #92 sits in the category “Change Timing / Frequency.” It’s called Objective (Urgent vs. Nurture), and in the catalog it reads like this: * Violation: Nurturing leads for 12 months. * Scalpel: How to force a decision? * Target State: “FSD price increases by $1,000 next week.” In plain words: lots of companies spend a year gently warming up possible buyers. There are emails, check-ins, webinars, and more emails. The buyer never says no. They just say “later,” over and over. The lever asks what you can remove so the buyer has to decide. The answer is the long, slow wait. Put a real deadline in its place. The catalog’s own example is Tesla. That’s no accident. Tesla used this lever about as well as any company ever has. The full price timeline Here’s the verified history of the upfront price for Full Self-Driving in the US, plus the subscription and trial changes. The climb from $5,000 to $15,000 took about three and a half years. The fall from $15,000 to “you can’t buy it anymore” took about the same. Along the way, the message was clear. In May 2020, Musk wrote that “the FSD price will continue to rise as the software gets closer to full self-driving capability with regulatory approval”. In 2019, he said Teslas with it would be “appreciating assets”. If you believed that, buying early was the smart move. Why urgency pricing works Urgency pricing isn’t a trick. It works because of how people actually make decisions. Here are the three big reasons. 1. Missing out hurts more than winning feels good. Losing a deal stings more than getting one feels good. When the price goes up next week, waiting stops feeling free. It starts to feel like losing money. 2. A deadline ends “later.” Most buyers don’t say no. They put it off. Every week of “let me think about it” is a week the buyer can drift away. A real deadline takes “later” off the table. That’s exactly what lever #92 is after. 3. It rewards your first believers. Your earliest buyers are usually your biggest fans. Urgency gives them a better price for trusting you first. That feels fair, and it is fair, as long as the story holds. For Tesla, it worked. Early buyers paid up, some as much as $15,000, to lock in the price. That brought in cash early. It also built a big group of loyal owners who wanted the product to succeed and talked about it everywhere. Compare that to the slow route. If Tesla had nudged people gently for a year, many would still be “thinking about it.” Many would never have bought at all. Then the plan changed Starting in 2021, Tesla moved step by step toward a different model. First came the monthly plan. Then, in September 2023, the first upfront cut. In spring 2024, everything happened at once. Tesla gave a free month to every capable US car, cut the subscription in half to $99 a month, and cut the upfront price by about a third to $8,000. Free trials kept coming with major new versions, roughly every year or so. Then, in February 2026, Tesla stopped selling it outright in North America. Musk has said the $99 monthly price will rise as the software improves. As of October 2026, it’s still $99. Each of these steps had a sound business reason. Not many buyers were choosing the big upfront option. Tesla’s CFO said in October 2025 that only about 12% of customers had paid for FSD. A cheaper monthly plan and free trials let far more people try it. More drivers can also mean more real-world data for the software. If I were running a business with a low take rate, I’d look hard at the same moves. How it backfires Now look at it from the owner who bought at the top. They did exactly what they were asked to do. They acted fast. They trusted the story. A few years later, the person next to them got a free month and could keep it for $99 a month. Fred Lambert at Electrek put it plainly: “you have to feel for the people who paid $15,000 for this package in 2022. They paid the equivalent of 12 years of subscriptions.” The math checks out. $15,000 divided by $99 is about 150 months. Some owners pushed back. After the 2024 cuts, Torque News reported that some buyers who paid $12,000 or $15,000 wanted refunds, and that early Cybertruck buyers were especially unhappy. When some inventory cars later showed FSD at lower prices, a $15,000 buyer suggested store credit as a fair fix. When the first free trial came, owners who’d paid in full got no credit, while monthly subscribers got a free month. There’s one more wrinkle. On the Q1 2026 earnings call, Musk said older cars with its HW3 computer can’t run the unsupervised version. Those cars get a supervised “Lite” version instead. Tesla has talked about retrofits or trade-in deals, but there’s no firm date or price yet. Here’s the part that matters for any business. These weren’t random buyers. They were the biggest fans. The people who trusted you first are the ones who end up feeling the worst. And it spreads. Early fans talk the most. When they feel let down, the next buyer hears about it. Your next deadline works less well, because people have learned to wait. Why buy now if it might get cheaper, or free, later? That’s the real cost. You don’t just upset one group. You teach your whole market to wait. What Tesla did right It would be unfair to stop there. Tesla did several things well. * The purchase stays with the car. FSD bought outright stays with that car, including when it’s sold. * Transfer windows. For a while, Tesla let owners move FSD to a new Tesla. That was a real gesture to early buyers. The last program ended March 31, 2026. * Honesty about price changes. Musk has said openly that “Tesla prices must change frequently to match production with demand.” Most companies change prices. That alone isn’t wrong. * More people can try it. Free trials and a $99 plan opened the product to millions of drivers who’d never pay $15,000 up front. That’s good for customers too. So the takeaway isn’t “Tesla got it wrong.” It’s that a deadline built around “the price only goes up” is a promise about the future. And the future is hard to promise. The one question to ask first Before you use a deadline to get people to buy, ask one question: Will your fastest buyers still feel smart a year later? Not next week. A year from now. Picture your most eager customer. They bought on day one at full price. Now picture everything you might do over the next year: * A discount to hit a sales target. * A free trial to grow your user base. * A cheaper plan for a new market. * A move from one-time pricing to monthly. Would your first buyer look at any of those and feel like they got a bad deal? If yes, you have two honest choices. Skip the deadline. Or plan right now for how you’ll take care of those early buyers when things change. A checklist for urgency without the regret Use this before you announce any “price goes up next week” offer. * Write down your like… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

  3. Oct 22

    Tesla Robotaxi and Optimus: Can They Carry a Stalled Car Business?

    Tesla Robotaxi and Optimus after Tesla’s Q3 earnings: can the robot bet carry a stalled car business while spending more than doubles? Making a big bet ahead of your sales? Book a call: https://book.pjtbd.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_content=2026-10-22-tesla Tesla’s car business has stalled: it sold about as many cars over the last 12 months as it did three years ago, and this summer deliveries slipped 2.1% from a year earlier. On the Q3 2026 earnings call, CFO Vaibhav Taneja put this year’s capital spending at about $20B (spoken on the call, per a third-party transcript; the Q3 deck gives no number). That’s more than twice what Tesla spent last year, as it builds AI compute, robot factories and a robotaxi fleet. I give Tesla credit for what went right this quarter: positive free cash flow when analysts expected a big cash burn, spending well under estimates, and its highest 12-month revenue ever. Then I test the bet. Tesla showed robotaxi miles and the start of Optimus production, but neither has a revenue line of its own. The verdict, and the one number to watch next. Chapters0:00 Tesla’s car business has stalled0:39 Deliveries: up to the peak, then flat1:24 Where the profit went1:57 Four things that cut against the story2:57 The company isn’t in trouble3:15 Robotaxis: what Tesla showed4:01 Optimus: what Tesla showed4:38 The missing line5:10 Adding, or taking away?6:37 What has to hold7:11 Both sides7:41 Verdict: not yet, and the test to watch8:24 Thanks for watching Sources * Tesla Q3 2026 results, Form 8-K (Oct 21, 2026): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000162828026066738/tsla-20261021.htm * Tesla Q3 2026 Update deck, Exhibit 99.1 (Oct 21, 2026): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000162828026066738/exhibit9914.htm * Tesla-compiled Q3 2026 analyst consensus (Oct 19, 2026; analyst estimates Tesla posts but doesn’t endorse): https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/earnings-consensus-third-quarter-2026 * Tesla Robotaxi Safety Report (Jan 22 to Oct 18, 2026; Tesla’s own figures): https://www.tesla.com/robotaxi/safety * Tesla Q3 2026 earnings call transcript (third party, Benzinga, automated, Oct 21, 2026): https://www.benzinga.com/news/26/10/62515021/tesla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript * Tesla Q4 2025 Update deck (Jan 28, 2026): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000162828026003837/exhibit991.htm * Tesla Q2 2026 Update deck (Jul 22, 2026): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000162828026049213/exhibit991.htm * Tesla Q2 2026 Form 10-Q (Jul 23, 2026): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000162828026049270/tsla-20260630.htm * Tesla shareholder letter (DEFA14A, Oct 19, 2026): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465926116948/tm267596d7_defa14a.htm * Elon Musk on X (Oct 18, 2026): * Electrek, Tesla Q3 2026 results (Oct 21, 2026; opinion): https://electrek.co/2026/10/21/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-financial-results/ * TechCrunch, Optimus production and robotaxi timing (Oct 21, 2026): https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/21/tesla-stars-optimus-robot-production-in-california-as-profit-falls-43/ Based on public information only. Robotaxi and Optimus claims are Tesla’s or Elon Musk’s own, as labeled in the video. Tesla, Optimus, Cybercab, X, Benzinga, Electrek and TechCrunch are named only to identify each company. Not investment advice. Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@mike.boysen?sub_confirmation=1Book a call https://book.pjtbd.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

    Tesla Robotaxi and Optimus: Can They Carry a Stalled Car Business?

  4. Oct 21

    Enterprise Decision Velocity: Does a 1,149x Cost Gap Justify Deleting the Queue Layers?

    Enterprise decision making and decision velocity: why AI agents and copilots won't speed up your company's biggest decisions, where the time really goes, and how to prove a decision got faster. Big decisions stuck waiting between teams? Book a call: https://book.pjtbd.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_content=2026-10-20-decision-velocity Your systems run in a blink. Your biggest decisions still take weeks. In this breakdown of a research study on enterprise decision velocity, I show where the time really goes: not in the thinking, but in the waiting between teams and systems. We cover the true cost of one big commitment, why AI copilots speed up the wrong part, the speed traps that bite fast teams, a full architecture for signed handoffs, the pushback you'll get, and the one test that tells you if a speed-up is real. Strategy built and tested in Venture Proof, a powerful, disruptive strategy-as-code engine that builds and tests strategy with code. It's available through advisory work. Chapters 0:00 Fast software, slow decisions 0:34 The 84-day filing 1:17 Credit first 1:54 Map the job, not the wish list 2:34 The Physics Gap 3:17 What is a decision, really 3:58 Time the line, not the scanner 5:34 The border crossings 6:11 Why it can't be instant 6:52 Two paths 7:35 Missing owners, missing paper 8:54 Add versus subtract 9:52 Speed rebound 10:32 The bottleneck moves 11:20 The metering light 12:03 Architecture: the six parts 14:04 Architecture: where latency builds 15:18 The signed handoff 16:06 Lock the baseline 16:42 The plan in four moves 17:22 Before and after 18:00 The pushback 19:25 The scoreboard that counts 20:37 Profit model 21:11 Moat and flywheel 21:59 The tough review 22:36 How you'd start 23:15 The middle-management question 23:50 My take 24:21 The one test Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@mike.boysen?sub_confirmation=1 Book a call https://book.pjtbd.com More: https://jtbd.one #EnterpriseDecisionMaking #DecisionVelocity #DecisionMaking #AIAgents #OperationsStrategy #COO #CycleTime #LittlesLaw #JevonsParadox #Bottlenecks #JobsToBeDone #JTBD #Strategy #InnovationUnpacked #MikeBoysen This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

  5. Oct 20

    AWS Wasn't Built on Spare Servers: The Idle Capacity Myth

    AWS Wasn’t Built on Spare Servers: The Idle Capacity Myth You’ve probably heard it: Amazon bought too many servers for the holidays, they sat idle in January, so somebody decided to rent them out, and that’s how Amazon Web Services was born. The people who built it say it isn’t true. In this video, I look at what really happened, why the spare-server story couldn’t work, and why the myth won’t die. Then we look at where idle assets really pay (cars, hotels, homes, warehouses), where they broke (Getaround, WeWork), and three questions to ask before you build a business on idle capacity. Chapters 0:00 The story everyone tells 1:01 What really happened 2:40 Why spare servers couldn’t work 3:22 Why the myth won’t die 4:11 Where idle assets really pay 5:11 Where they broke 7:00 Demand Inversion: free it, then fill it 7:58 The guardrail: don’t resell a giant’s spare capacity 9:41 Orphaned capacity: the better play 10:21 Three questions and close If this was useful, subscribe to Innovation Unpacked. Go deeper: https://jtbd.one This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

    AWS Wasn't Built on Spare Servers: The Idle Capacity Myth

  6. Oct 19

    Every CRM Giant Is Building the Same Thing

    Every big CRM vendor is racing to add AI agents. Salesforce, Microsoft, HubSpot, Oracle, SAP, ServiceNow and Zoho all have them. But look closely and the agents are mostly typing into the same boxes the old CRM always had: the same stages, the same pipeline report, the same forecast. That’s automation. It isn’t innovation. In this video I lay the CRM out as one map and walk it through three states: * The system of record, and why it breaks. * What the vendors are building now (agents, assistants, data layers), with credit where it’s due. * Where it should go: build around the one block on the map that none of them own yet. Partway through there’s an example pilot. It’s an illustration of how the idea could play out, not a result from a real company. Venture Proof is a powerful, disruptive strategy-as-code engine I built. It builds and tests strategy with code. It’s in alpha. Right now you can get it through my advisory work, and Venture Proof Mastermind cohorts run parts of their projects in it. More: https://jtbd.one CHAPTERS0:00 Automation is not innovation0:54 The CRM map1:20 State 1: the system of record3:02 State 2: what the vendors are building5:10 The warning signs5:54 State 3: what if we deleted a block?7:12 Inside the customer’s result7:45 The map, rewired8:14 Example pilot (illustration, not a real company)9:03 The profit model9:43 Moat and flywheel10:32 Payoff: the one block nobody owns yet11:13 Close SOURCESEvery vendor fact comes from that company’s own public announcements. Every number comes from a named study. * Salesforce, State of Sales 2026: https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/state-of-sales-report-announcement-2026/ * Validity, The State of CRM Data Management in 2025: https://www.validity.com/resource-center/the-state-of-crm-data-management-in-2025/ * Scott Edinger, “Why CRM Projects Fail and How to Make Them More Successful,” HBR (cites CIO magazine’s average of analyst reports): https://hbr.org/2018/12/why-crm-projects-fail-and-how-to-make-them-more-successful * CRM history (Siebel 1993, Salesforce 1999): https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/salesforce-at-20-offers-lessons-for-startup-success/ * Salesforce, Dreamforce 2026 announcements: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/dreamforce-2026-announcements/ * Salesforce, Q2 FY27 results (Data 360): https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2026/08/26/fy27-q2-earnings/ * Salesforce, Flex Credits rate card (Aug 31, 2026): https://www.salesforce.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/assets/pdf/agentforce/Flex-Credits-Rate-Card-08.31.2026.pdf * Microsoft, Dynamics 365 Sales 2026 release wave 1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/sales/dynamics365-sales/ * Microsoft, Dynamics 365 Sales agents overview: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/sales/ai-agent-overview * HubSpot, Fall 2026 Spotlight: https://www.hubspot.com/company-news/fall-26-spotlight * Oracle, Fusion Agentic Applications for CX (Apr 9, 2026): https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oracle-introduces-fusion-agentic-applications-for-cx-2026-04-09/ * SAP, SAP Connect keynote (Oct 2026): https://news.sap.com/2026/10/sap-connect-keynote-autonomous-enterprise-in-action/ * ServiceNow, Knowledge 2026 (Autonomous CRM): https://newsroom.servicenow.com/press-releases/details/2026/ServiceNow-turns-enterprise-AI-chaos-into-control-with-the-platform-for-governed-autonomous-work/default.aspx * Zoho, Zia Agents: https://www.zoho.com/news/zia-agents-ai-platform-supporting-autonomous-agents-across-organizations.html * Zoho, Zia LLM: https://www.zoho.com/news/zoho-launches-zia-llm-and-deepens-ai-portfolio-with-prebuilt-agents-custom-agent-builder-mcp-and-marketplace.html * Gartner, agentic AI prediction (Jun 25, 2025): https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-06-25-gartner-predicts-over-40-percent-of-agentic-ai-projects-will-be-canceled-by-end-of-2027 * MIT NANDA, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 (reported by Fortune): https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/ * Sierra, on seat vs. outcome pricing: https://sierra.ai/blog/outcomemaxxing Logos are trademarks of their owners and appear only to identify each company. Book an appointment: Click hereEmail me: mike@pjtbd.comCall me: +1 678-824-2789Follow me on 𝕏: https://x.com/mikeboysenArticles - jtbd.one - De-Risk Your Next Big IdeaWebsite - pjtbd.com Slaying the Sacred Cows of Innovation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

    Every CRM Giant Is Building the Same Thing

  7. Oct 17

    Musk vs Amazon: Will the Idea Hold?

    Question: who believes you need a consumer survey to figure this stuff out? Not me. Waste of time and money. I deleted the survey. You should too. Amazon just blocked Grok’s shopping bots. People found their bots stopped at Amazon’s door with a short message. It said that “continued access by an unauthorized AI agent” breaks Amazon’s rules. Elon Musk’s answer was quick. On October 15, he posted, “Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon?” That’s all he said. There’s no plan, no timeline and no product. So let’s treat it the way he posted it. It’s an idea. But it’s a bold one, and on paper it’s a smart one. So I ran it through a stress test. Every big plan rests on a few things that have to be true. If one of them breaks, the plan breaks with it. Let’s find the one most likely to break. The idea, said fairly Musk didn’t just get mad at Amazon. He pointed to a way around it. He told people to “just ask Grok to buy what you want someplace else and get a better deal.” He added, “There are far more purchasing websites than just Amazon!” A few days earlier, he said Grok had already bought his Lego straight from Lego’s own website. Credit where it’s due. Grok is already on phones, on X and in Teslas. That’s a front door millions of people walk through every day. Most new shopping ideas have to fight for that kind of reach. Musk already has it. What has to be true Here are the four things this idea needs. * People want a bot that shops for them. Not just one that finds things. One that actually buys. * Enough stores let the bots in. If the stores close their doors, the bot has nowhere to shop. * Orders show up on time, like Prime. People got used to fast shipping. They won’t go back. * When something goes wrong, someone makes it right. A bad order or a leaked card can’t just be the shopper’s problem. Musk already moved on number four. He said SpaceX will pay you back if Grok messes up an order or leaks your card details. That’s a strong move. It takes a big fear off the table. Most of these look solid. One of them doesn’t. Start from what’s actually true Here’s the plain truth under all of this. Every store is built to look out for itself. Not for you. That sounds harsh, but it’s just how stores work. Each one sets its own shipping. Each one has its own return rules. Each one has its own ways to fail. When a bot shops across five stores, it doesn’t get one simple trip. It gets five sets of rules stacked on top of each other. I ran this idea through Venture Proof. Here’s what came back. Today, buying across stores costs about $770 for each round of shopping, once you count all the time, steps and mistakes. The lowest it could cost is about $7. That’s the study’s own estimate, not a final number. But even if it’s off by a lot, the point stands. There’s a huge amount of waste to cut. That’s a big prize, and it’s why Musk’s idea is worth taking seriously. The one that may break Here’s the catch. The stores decide if the bot gets in. Amazon already said no. It’s been setting rules for AI agents since March. It blocked another big company’s shopping bot in September. Now it’s blocking Grok. Other stores may say no too. Why? Because a shopping bot can look like a new middleman. It stands between the store and the shopper. And stores don’t like a new middleman taking a cut of their sales. So the second thing on our list, “enough stores let the bots in,” is the one that could break the whole idea. You can have the best bot in the world. If the doors are shut, it can’t buy anything. There’s a second thing to watch. It’s trust. Bain & Company found that about half of shoppers are wary of letting a bot buy things on its own from start to finish. Musk’s payback promise helps here. But it doesn’t fix it all. Take something away instead Most people’s first thought would be to build a new Amazon. New warehouses. New trucks. A new store. That’s the hard way, and it’s the slow way. It also puts you right up against Amazon’s biggest strength. So what if Musk took something away instead of adding more? * Don’t build a new Amazon. No new warehouses and no new store. * Borrow what already exists. Lots of stores and delivery networks already want more traffic. Send it to them. * Give shoppers a clear yes button. Before every buy, the shopper says yes. Then the bot buys. The yes button does two jobs. It helps with trust, because the shopper stays in charge. It also helps with stores, because the bot looks less like a middleman and more like a customer who already decided. That’s the move. Don’t fight Amazon on its own ground. Bring stores a flood of ready buyers and let them keep doing what they’re good at. What a full Venture Proof analysis gives you Venture Proof is a powerful, disruptive strategy-as-code engine. It builds and tests your strategy with code, so every step runs the same way and can be checked. Here’s what a full analysis gave me on this one idea: * The true cost. Buying across stores costs about $770 today for each round of shopping. The lowest it could cost is about $7. * What to remove. Skip the new warehouses and the new store. Borrow partner networks that already exist. Cut the extra steps down to one clear yes from the shopper. * A plan in stages. First, test it by hand. Second, build what’s hard to copy. Third, automate what worked. Fourth, grow. About a month for each stage. * A tough review. The idea passed with 92 out of 100. The review raised seven hard challenges. None of them held up. Venture Proof is in private Alpha. I only run it through my advisory work, so spots are few. The payoff Musk’s idea works if stores open their doors. That’s the thing to test first, before anyone builds anything big. He has the reach. He has the payback promise. He has a bot people already use. What he needs is proof that enough stores will say yes. If you’re on Musk’s team, or you’re making a bet like this one, let’s talk before it’s locked in. Book an appointment: Click hereEmail me: mike@pjtbd.comCall me: +1 678-824-2789Follow me on 𝕏: https://x.com/mikeboysenArticles - jtbd.one - De-Risk Your Next Big IdeaWebsite - pjtbd.com Slaying the Sacred Cows of Innovation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

    Musk vs Amazon: Will the Idea Hold?

  8. Oct 15

    Starlink Sells the Sky It Can’t Turn Off: The One-Owner Idle Capacity Play

    Disclaimer: this video was created 99% by my Grok Bot. The other 1% is my knowledge base and Innovation Lattice (which both power my Venture Proof platform. I’m trying to deliver quality content to you, but have limited bandwith. I hope you don’t mind as I experiment in the open. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to learn more. Contact info is at the end. Thousands of Starlink satellites fly over empty ocean every minute, with almost nobody below them. That empty bandwidth should be waste. Instead it’s part of SpaceX’s biggest business. In my last video, we saw that AWS wasn’t built on spare servers and that idle capacity usually pays when it’s pooled from many owners, like Airbnb. Starlink has just one owner. In this video, I look at why that works: why the idle capacity is built in by physics, why selling one more ship costs almost nothing, how SpaceX sells the spare sky (maritime, aviation, rural, roam, direct to cell, Starshield and community gateways), how its prices follow congestion, why many-owner marketplaces like Getaround struggled, and how reusable rockets made the whole thing affordable. Then we ask whether SpaceX created value by adding or by subtracting, and what it means for idle capacity in your own business. Chapters0:00 The one-owner puzzle0:53 The rule from my last video1:51 Idle by physics3:44 What one more ship costs5:04 How SpaceX sells the spare sky7:13 Prices that follow the physics8:26 The numbers9:16 Why many owners is hard10:33 The rocket under it all12:23 Add or subtract?14:00 Where it can break: three questions14:58 Close Clips used (short excerpts for commentary, each credited on screen) * Elon Musk, SpaceX Seattle event, Jan 16, 2015 (about 27 s). Video: “SpaceX Seattle 2015” by Cliff O (audience recording): * Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX President, TED 2018 (about 31 s). Video: TED, “SpaceX’s plan to fly you across the globe in 30 minutes”: * Elon Musk, Air Warfare Symposium, Feb 28, 2020, Air Force Association fireside chat (about 33 s). Video: DVIDS: https://www.dvidshub.net/video/741194/2020-air-warfare-symposium-day-2-fireside-chat-elon-musk (also re-uploaded by The Space Archive: B-roll: Pexels (free licence): Alexander Bobrov (6857819, 2943126), Matthias Groeneveld (17818434), Jake Houglum (7714718).Music: ElevenLabs music bed. SourcesCelesTrak satellite catalog via KeepTrack and Satellites Tonight (Oct 2026); NOAA Ocean Service; PCMag (Starlink laser links, 2024; Q2 2026 subscribers; demand surcharges and regional savings); SpaceX update (Aug 2026); SpaceX S-1 coverage via Sacra; Quilty Space and Payload Space (2026 analyst forecasts); SatelliteInternet.com; Starlink plan pages via Orbital Intel, Global Satellite and Sea Bits; Airline Starlink Tracker; T-Mobile T-Satellite; DefenseScoop (Space Force contract, May 2026); Open Falklands (community gateway); Airbnb AirCover for Hosts; TechCrunch and SEC filings (Getaround); CSIS Aerospace Security Project and NASA (launch costs); Space.com (booster reuse). Each scene’s source is shown on screen. If this was useful, subscribe to Innovation Unpacked.Go deeper: https://jtbd.one Book an appointment: Click hereEmail me: mike@pjtbd.comCall me: +1 678-824-2789Follow me on 𝕏: https://x.com/mikeboysenArticles - jtbd.one - De-Risk Your Next Big IdeaWebsite - pjtbd.com Slaying the Sacred Cows of Innovation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.jtbd.one/subscribe

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Mike Boysen shares insights into the evolution of First Principles and Jobs-to-be-Done, especially in the age of Generative AI. He makes the previously secret process more accessible new approaches and automated tools that vastly reduce the time, effort, and cost of doing what the large enterprises have been investing in for years. This will be especially interesting for the earlier stage, smaller enterprises, and those investing in them who have always had to rely on a superstar, or guess (or maybe that's the same thing!). So...check it out! www.jtbd.one

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