PreflightEcom: Unit Economics & Strategy Simulator for Aspiring Founders

1. Educate yourself on the real basics of business. The tone with which you’ve written this post makes me think your view on business is the ‘Ali Arbitrage’ that’s been popularised by gurus on social media. 2. Avoid YouTube like the plague. Sure, you might be ok looking up specific things like ‘how to set up shipping rates in Shopify’ or ‘what is unit economics’ or ‘GA4 tutorial’ but broad magic bullet stuff like ‘how to start an e-commerce business’ is going to see you wading into the guru swamp. 3. Read to excerpt from a post I wrote in another sub below on how to educate yourself. 4. Once you do have a head for the basics you’ll move to exploring categories and niches you have leverage in to turn over rocks and look for gaps and opportunities. Once you think you’ve found one you’ll need to devise a way to address it that’s compelling, competitive, defensible, and that adds value. Then you’ll socialise that thinking, get feedback, iterate, play it back to those would-be customers or tank the idea. All before building a thing. 5. You need some capital. — “Starting a business is more akin to learning to fly a plane than taking up tennis. In tennis, you can pick up a racket, start taping the ball over the net with a mate, and slowly learn the techniques while putting it into practice.  In business, you need to have a baseline understanding before sinking time, effort, and capital. Tennis—you’re playing with a mate in your backyard or at a local court. The stakes are low, not much can go wrong. It's a game. In business, you’re competing in the actual market, which is akin to going up against Federer. The market will indiscriminately chew you up and spit you out if you’re not match fit.  So, how do you educate yourself on business?  **Google/ChatGPT** Yes, seriously. Everything starts with Google and increasingly ChatGPT or your AI of choice.  The sort of stuff you should be searching to begin with: ‘how to set up a business in \[your country\]’ ‘business 101’ ‘advertising 101’ ‘business finance 101’ As you search stuff, go down all the rabbit holes.  The more boring the content the better. You should be reading stuff written by tax departments and so on. Factual and boring. We don’t want to read hype here—we want to know what the actual basics are. “Hmm, I am reading a lot about P&Ls and unit economics when I study business finance. What are they?” Go down the rabbit holes.  Whenever you come up against a new word, phrase, concept, search it, learn it, know it. This is how you build knowledge.  By all means, use YouTube as a research tool. But, be careful. The broader your search, e.g. ‘how to start an e-commerce business’ the more likely you are to wade into murky dropbro territory. You’re going to find heaps of over-simplified, ‘it’s easy, all you have to do is XYZ, look I have the Lambo to prove it’ type content that largely perform as lead magnets for courses, blueprints, and coaching programs.  Searching ‘how to use GA4’ or ‘how to calculate unit economics’ on YouTube is likely to turn up some really good stuff. But keep it specific. **Books** Remember those? Nothing can quite replace the experience of reading a book. Especially a physical book.  Here are some of my recommendations: \- How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp \- Stark Naked Numbers by Jason Andrew \- Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim \- 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer \- Purple Cow by Seth Godin There are loads of great business books out there. These are just a few that I have read and refer back to regularly. How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp is probably my number one recommendation as it’s central to how marketing actually works. It’s an influential book that’s on the bookshelves of any marketer worth their salt—no doubt the CMOs of Coke, McDonalds, Nike, and Ford, all have a copy.  Don't want to splash out $30 a book? Go to your local library—remember those?—and borrow a copy. I’m not trying to tell you spend money here I’m just trying to help you educate yourself properly. **Study Other Businesses** What did all the successful businesses out there do to get started? How did they find success? How did they differentiate in a competitive market? How did they grow to where they are today?  Go and find out.  Study their backstories. Study their founders. If they’re publicly listed, go and study their annual reports. Learn from the best.  Watch some episodes of Shark Tank and Dragon's Den too. Great show, real businesses, real business people talking business. Notice something by the way—you’re not going to find any of these ‘winning product, test with ads’ spaghetti against the wall dropshipping businesses in this research. I can’t name a single verifiably successful business that started that way. If it was successful as an approach, there should be hundreds of businesses out there that started that way that the media has reported on? We know about them through shared Shopify screenshots and blokes with beards saying ‘trust me bro’. Convincing, right? \~ rolls eyes \~ While you’re on Google and ChatGPT, reading books, and studying your favourite brands and retailers, take notes. Fire up a clean Google Doc and jot down things as you go, stitch things together, and start to triangulate what you’re learning. You’re starting to build knowledge.”

1. Educate yourself on the real basics of business. The tone with which you’ve written this post makes me think your view on business is the ‘Ali Arbitrage’ that’s been popularised by gurus on social media. 2. Avoid YouTube like the plague. Sure, you might be ok looking up specific things like ‘how to set up shipping rates in Shopify’ or ‘what is unit economics’ or ‘GA4 tutorial’ but broad magic bullet stuff like ‘how to start an e-commerce business’ is going to see you wading into the guru swamp. 3. Read to excerpt from a post I wrote in another sub below on how to educate yourself. 4. Once you do have a head for the basics you’ll move to exploring categories and niches you have leverage in to turn over rocks and look for gaps and opportunities. Once you think you’ve found one you’ll need to devise a way to address it that’s compelling, competitive, defensible, and that adds value. Then you’ll socialise that thinking, get feedback, iterate, play it back to those would-be customers or tank the idea. All before building a thing. 5. You need some capital. — “Starting a business is more akin to learning to fly a plane than taking up tennis. In tennis, you can pick up a racket, start taping the ball over the net with a mate, and slowly learn the techniques while putting it into practice.  In business, you need to have a baseline understanding before sinking time, effort, and capital. Tennis—you’re playing with a mate in your backyard or at a local court. The stakes are low, not much can go wrong. It's a game. In business, you’re competing in the actual market, which is akin to going up against Federer. The market will indiscriminately chew you up and spit you out if you’re not match fit.  So, how do you educate yourself on business?  **Google/ChatGPT** Yes, seriously. Everything starts with Google and increasingly ChatGPT or your AI of choice.  The sort of stuff you should be searching to begin with: ‘how to set up a business in \[your country\]’ ‘business 101’ ‘advertising 101’ ‘business finance 101’ As you search stuff, go down all the rabbit holes.  The more boring the content the better. You should be reading stuff written by tax departments and so on. Factual and boring. We don’t want to read hype here—we want to know what the actual basics are. “Hmm, I am reading a lot about P&Ls and unit economics when I study business finance. What are they?” Go down the rabbit holes.  Whenever you come up against a new word, phrase, concept, search it, learn it, know it. This is how you build knowledge.  By all means, use YouTube as a research tool. But, be careful. The broader your search, e.g. ‘how to start an e-commerce business’ the more likely you are to wade into murky dropbro territory. You’re going to find heaps of over-simplified, ‘it’s easy, all you have to do is XYZ, look I have the Lambo to prove it’ type content that largely perform as lead magnets for courses, blueprints, and coaching programs.  Searching ‘how to use GA4’ or ‘how to calculate unit economics’ on YouTube is likely to turn up some really good stuff. But keep it specific. **Books** Remember those? Nothing can quite replace the experience of reading a book. Especially a physical book.  Here are some of my recommendations: \- How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp \- Stark Naked Numbers by Jason Andrew \- Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim \- 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer \- Purple Cow by Seth Godin There are loads of great business books out there. These are just a few that I have read and refer back to regularly. How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp is probably my number one recommendation as it’s central to how marketing actually works. It’s an influential book that’s on the bookshelves of any marketer worth their salt—no doubt the CMOs of Coke, McDonalds, Nike, and Ford, all have a copy.  Don't want to splash out $30 a book? Go to your local library—remember those?—and borrow a copy. I’m not trying to tell you spend money here I’m just trying to help you educate yourself properly. **Study Other Businesses** What did all the successful businesses out there do to get started? How did they find success? How did they differentiate in a competitive market? How did they grow to where they are today?  Go and find out.  Study their backstories. Study their founders. If they’re publicly listed, go and study their annual reports. Learn from the best.  Watch some episodes of Shark Tank and Dragon's Den too. Great show, real businesses, real business people talking business. Notice something by the way—you’re not going to find any of these ‘winning product, test with ads’ spaghetti against the wall dropshipping businesses in this research. I can’t name a single verifiably successful business that started that way. If it was successful as an approach, there should be hundreds of businesses out there that started that way that the media has reported on? We know about them through shared Shopify screenshots and blokes with beards saying ‘trust me bro’. Convincing, right? \~ rolls eyes \~ While you’re on Google and ChatGPT, reading books, and studying your favourite brands and retailers, take notes. Fire up a clean Google Doc and jot down things as you go, stitch things together, and start to triangulate what you’re learning. You’re starting to build knowledge.”

1. Educate yourself on the real basics of business. The tone with which you’ve written this post makes me think your view on business is the ‘Ali Arbitrage’ that’s been popularised by gurus on social media. 2. Avoid YouTube like the plague. Sure, you might be ok looking up specific things like ‘how to set up shipping rates in Shopify’ or ‘what is unit economics’ or ‘GA4 tutorial’ but broad magic bullet stuff like ‘how to start an e-commerce business’ is going to see you wading into the guru swamp. 3. Read to excerpt from a post I wrote in another sub below on how to educate yourself. 4. Once you do have a head for the basics you’ll move to exploring categories and niches you have leverage in to turn over rocks and look for gaps and opportunities. Once you think you’ve found one you’ll need to devise a way to address it that’s compelling, competitive, defensible, and that adds value. Then you’ll socialise that thinking, get feedback, iterate, play it back to those would-be customers or tank the idea. All before building a thing. 5. You need some capital. — “Starting a business is more akin to learning to fly a plane than taking up tennis. In tennis, you can pick up a racket, start taping the ball over the net with a mate, and slowly learn the techniques while putting it into practice.  In business, you need to have a baseline understanding before sinking time, effort, and capital. Tennis—you’re playing with a mate in your backyard or at a local court. The stakes are low, not much can go wrong. It's a game. In business, you’re competing in the actual market, which is akin to going up against Federer. The market will indiscriminately chew you up and spit you out if you’re not match fit.  So, how do you educate yourself on business?  **Google/ChatGPT** Yes, seriously. Everything starts with Google and increasingly ChatGPT or your AI of choice.  The sort of stuff you should be searching to begin with: ‘how to set up a business in \[your country\]’ ‘business 101’ ‘advertising 101’ ‘business finance 101’ As you search stuff, go down all the rabbit holes.  The more boring the content the better. You should be reading stuff written by tax departments and so on. Factual and boring. We don’t want to read hype here—we want to know what the actual basics are. “Hmm, I am reading a lot about P&Ls and unit economics when I study business finance. What are they?” Go down the rabbit holes.  Whenever you come up against a new word, phrase, concept, search it, learn it, know it. This is how you build knowledge.  By all means, use YouTube as a research tool. But, be careful. The broader your search, e.g. ‘how to start an e-commerce business’ the more likely you are to wade into murky dropbro territory. You’re going to find heaps of over-simplified, ‘it’s easy, all you have to do is XYZ, look I have the Lambo to prove it’ type content that largely perform as lead magnets for courses, blueprints, and coaching programs.  Searching ‘how to use GA4’ or ‘how to calculate unit economics’ on YouTube is likely to turn up some really good stuff. But keep it specific. **Books** Remember those? Nothing can quite replace the experience of reading a book. Especially a physical book.  Here are some of my recommendations: \- How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp \- Stark Naked Numbers by Jason Andrew \- Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim \- 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer \- Purple Cow by Seth Godin There are loads of great business books out there. These are just a few that I have read and refer back to regularly. How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp is probably my number one recommendation as it’s central to how marketing actually works. It’s an influential book that’s on the bookshelves of any marketer worth their salt—no doubt the CMOs of Coke, McDonalds, Nike, and Ford, all have a copy.  Don't want to splash out $30 a book? Go to your local library—remember those?—and borrow a copy. I’m not trying to tell you spend money here I’m just trying to help you educate yourself properly. **Study Other Businesses** What did all the successful businesses out there do to get started? How did they find success? How did they differentiate in a competitive market? How did they grow to where they are today?  Go and find out.  Study their backstories. Study their founders. If they’re publicly listed, go and study their annual reports. Learn from the best.  Watch some episodes of Shark Tank and Dragon's Den too. Great show, real businesses, real business people talking business. Notice something by the way—you’re not going to find any of these ‘winning product, test with ads’ spaghetti against the wall dropshipping businesses in this research. I can’t name a single verifiably successful business that started that way. If it was successful as an approach, there should be hundreds of businesses out there that started that way that the media has reported on? We know about them through shared Shopify screenshots and blokes with beards saying ‘trust me bro’. Convincing, right? \~ rolls eyes \~ While you’re on Google and ChatGPT, reading books, and studying your favourite brands and retailers, take notes. Fire up a clean Google Doc and jot down things as you go, stitch things together, and start to triangulate what you’re learning. You’re starting to build knowledge.”