Intro to the F5 framework

All right! Welcome to Part Two of the program. In Part One, we examined our DC Growth System. We also explored some key concepts to help you level up as a growth thinker and growth leader. Very importantly, we examined how real growth — the kind of sustainable, defensible, scalable, and predictable growth you're looking for — does not start at the channel level.

It does not start with tactics. You certainly cannot hack your way to the kind of growth that you're seeking. Real growth comes from a systems design approach. We must engineer the foundation of our business for growth, and the earlier we do it, the better.

The Foundational Five framework is exactly how we engineer that alignment.

Now, one quick call out. Personally, this is my favorite startup growth framework. It allows me to take a company that I've never seen before and, within minutes, assess how they SHOULD be approaching growth and diagnose their key constraints. That makes for an incredibly powerful tool. And it's exactly why we make it a core part of this program.

As such, I REALLY want to stress the importance of this part of the program. I know many of you are excited to jump into the tactical layer. I know you're excited to build channels. Turn them on. Watch traffic start coming in. I know you're excited to build landing pages and test new ad creatives. However, I must emphasize again the importance of the program's foundational components. If you don't get this right, growth will be a struggle.

If you do get it right, you're giving yourself a massive advantage. You are significantly increasing the odds of finding a scalable growth engine. You'll even increase your chances of finding product-market fit. If you've ever looked at another company and thought, "How does growth seem so easy for them?" — it's because of their foundation. While they may have landed on a strong foundation by happenstance, YOU will have the tools to engineer it.

So, PLEASE give this the attention it deserves. It will save you SO much time down the road. We see so many founders... they come to us after years of trial and error. Years of guesswork and running in place because they lack a framework like this. My hope is to help you skip that phase and come out of the gate with an exceptionally strong foundation, putting you in the best position to have that scalable growth engine you're looking for.

With that said, let's take a closer look at the Foundational Five.

All right, so let's meet the five foundations:

• Your market, at the core of everything. Who are you serving?
• Your product. What are you offering them?
• Your model. How will you monetize?
• Your brand. How will we present ourselves to our market?
• And your channel. How do we bring our product and brand to our market?

Now, one quick (but important) thing here.

Some of you may be a bit allergic to the term "brand" — especially in the startup context. And I fully get it. In many ways, I actually agree. So, to clarify, when we say "brand" as one of your core foundations, we are not talking about logos, website, colors, or typography.

That is NOT what we mean by brand. By brand, we really mean story. We mean the story and the message that you are bringing to your market. The story that serves as fuel for our channel. That is the high-leverage part of brand for the startup stage. And we'll examine this more and more throughout the program, but brand, again, and more importantly, your story, is one of the highest-leverage pieces of your foundation. Largely BECAUSE it's neglected by so many of your competitors.

When everyone else is playing it safe, following cookie-cutter playbooks, looking like everyone else in their space ("startup blue," anyone??), you're giving yourself an opportunity to cut through the noise. Okay... Enough of brand and story for now. We'll go deeper on this later in the program.

One more call-out before we move on.

See how each of our foundations is aligned in this visual? That's extremely important. We'll get into the nuances of the alignments and pairings shortly. But the key thing to know right now: each piece of the foundation must be aligned with the others.

It is NOT enough to have product-market fit. It is not enough to have channel-market fit. Our channel must align with our product, which must align with our model, which must align with our brand, and so on. Every single foundation must be connected.

A very simple way to think about this framework: The stronger our individual alignments, the more—and faster—you'll grow. The weaker the individual alignments, the harder it will be.

All right, let's keep going.