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Strategy & startups: the desk

For founders and investors: pricing, early access, Wardley maps and who pays for open source.

22 articles on this desk, 16 more that touch it. Placed by rule from the subjects and topics of each article (articles/find.json); the editor can override a call, and says why.

Start here

Three pieces, in order, for a first visit to this desk.

1. For a startup, the most important question is whether they miss it 2026-09-21 · 7 min · Analysis
   The startup question this desk keeps asking first: would anybody miss it if you took it away?
2. Price it, then give it away: the early access programme as the next step after "do they miss it" 2026-10-02 · 11 min · Analysis
   The next step: price it, then give it away to people who know you, and measure what it costs them.
3. The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI 2026-09-21 · 14 min · Analysis
   A Wardley-style reading of the SaaS shake-out: inertia decides, not the AI.
4. Open source is not free: who pays to keep the long tail working? 2026-10-10 · 18 min · Analysis
   Who pays for the long tail, measured from public data, with five ways to pay simulated.
5. Ten hard questions for RiskMandate, answered: the mandate, the reach, the gap, and what we are deliberately not 2026-10-09 · 29 min · Interview
   The founder answering ten hard questions about the company: what it does, and what it deliberately is not.

Series

Two or more articles that tell one story in order.

Miss it, then price it · 2 parts · 18 min

The startup question first, then the early access programme that follows from it.

1. For a startup, the most important question is whether they miss it 2026-09-21 · 7 min · Analysis
   The question: would anybody miss it?
2. Price it, then give it away: the early access programme as the next step after "do they miss it" 2026-10-02 · 11 min · Analysis
   The next step: price it, then give it away and measure.

Every article on this desk

1. The citizen developer is good news: the spreadsheet grown up, the best briefs ever written, and the handover from explorers to villagers and town planners that makes them last 2026-10-14 · 6 min · Analysis
   The citizen developer is the spreadsheet grown up: the best briefs ever written, handed to villagers and town planners, carried in versioned vaults.
2. Paying after the value: why a balance that can go negative feels different from a subscription, the psychology behind it, and the experiment this newsroom is running 2026-10-14 · 8 min · Analysis
   Most purchases are bets on future value; a reading balance that can go negative asks for payment when the value is already in view.
3. The eyeballs get cheap: why open source is about to become the most secure software we have, and why secure, sovereign and paid-for meet at the least code in production 2026-10-14 · 9 min · Analysis
   Cheap, deep AI security review gives open source the eyeballs it never had; with sovereignty and paid maintenance, all point at the least code in production.
4. Chainguard, mapped: what it builds, what it publishes, how far up the stack its context goes, and where an open behaviour policy and an encrypted vault could plug in 2026-10-14 · 10 min · Analysis
   Chainguard mapped from OS to agents, its public feeds counted, and the context layer above the package where an open policy and a vault fit.
5. What open source is, and what it is not: six misconceptions, a little history, and why the point is that nobody can lock you in 2026-10-12 · 10 min · Analysis
   Open source is a copyright licence, not a free-for-all: six misconceptions corrected, and why the point is that nobody can lock you in.
6. Not a straight line: working for RiskMandate by working on the newsroom, and why the thinking is never wasted 2026-10-12 · 11 min · Analysis
   Working on the newsroom solved RiskMandate's oldest problem in two days: progress is not a straight line, and the thinking is never wasted.
7. Sovereignty is the ability to move: play where the ball is going, take away the dot, and keep a twin that works 2026-10-12 · 12 min · Analysis
   Sovereignty is the ability to move: take away each dot on the map, and keep a twin that works for the minimum viable company, tested in QA.
8. Move the cloud, not the code: twins, sovereignty that works in practice, and the migration that pays for itself on the day you switch 2026-10-12 · 13 min · Analysis
   Workloads stay on hyperscalers because moving means changing code; a twin lets the code not know, and the value in the twin is what signs the migration.
9. Judo for small countries: where Portugal, Romania and Estonia can add the most value in AI, and why the race for GPUs is not it 2026-10-12 · 18 min · Analysis
   A small country should not race for GPUs: the opportunity is the plumbing its talent stands on, built once as open infrastructure, with small models.
10. Why I love Wardley maps: the best of ours, how I read one, and a map inside a map inside a map 2026-10-12 · 19 min · Analysis
    The best of our Wardley maps with their context, why the technique matters, one map read as a story, and a map inside a map inside a map.
11. Places of highest leverage: where to focus when the agents can go in every direction, told with three days of real steps 2026-10-12 · 11 min · Analysis
    Where to focus when agents can go in every direction: the place of highest leverage, shown on three days of real steps, two walked back and one parked.
12. Agentic cost is an engineering problem: a business plan for a service that reads the logs a company already has and finds the money, then the engineering 2026-10-12 · 10 min · Business plan
    A business plan: read the logs a company already has, draw each agent's footprint, twin and policy, and find the money first and the engineering second.
13. I miss it, so it is working: the people who decide the roadmap have to use the product, and the vault the newsroom now needs 2026-10-11 · 10 min · Analysis
    I read the newsroom on four devices and they do not agree. Missing a feature is the best sign; the makers must use it. And the brief for the reader's vault.
14. Open source is not free: who pays to keep the long tail working? 2026-10-10 · 18 min · Analysis
    An old iMac, the long tail of old versions that projects are not paid to support, measured from public data, and five ways to pay for it, simulated.
15. A Mac of the agent's own: a business plan for agent desktops, what Apple's licence allows, and three behaviour policies 2026-10-09 · 13 min · Business plan
    A business plan for a Mac of the agent's own: what Apple's licence allows, a desktop built from vaults per run, and three behaviour policies for one agent.
16. Ten hard questions for RiskMandate, answered: the mandate, the reach, the gap, and what we are deliberately not 2026-10-09 · 29 min · Interview
    Ten hard questions from a conference, answered in a two-hour interview: what RiskMandate does, what it deliberately is not, and how mature each part is.
17. The deck I could not download: an author-first home for presentations, as a business plan somebody else can build 2026-10-06 · 17 min · Business plan
    One download offered as a subscription, an author paid nothing, and a design for the service the author would have chosen: vaults, keys, seven roles, 85% to the author.
18. If somebody built a company on code review: how I would do it, and why it is only now possible 2026-10-05 · 41 min · Business plan
    A reader's seven questions answered as a company plan: one reader for every layer, review as a science, and the layers as the customer's own.
19. Price it, then give it away: the early access programme as the next step after "do they miss it" 2026-10-02 · 11 min · Analysis
    Define the product, price it, deliver it at a cost that grows a step at a time, then offer it free to people who know you and measure what it costs them.
20. A supply chain of vaults: how GenAI, open data and small custom tools could bring the price of food down 2026-09-27 · 21 min · Analysis
    The food chain is a data problem: one encrypted vault per party, joined by append lanes and a typed graph, could cut the waste that keeps prices high.
21. For a startup, the most important question is whether they miss it 2026-09-21 · 7 min · Analysis
    Ship something usable, give it away briefly, take it away and see whether anybody misses it; charge at a profit before you talk to investors.
22. The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI 2026-09-21 · 14 min · Analysis
    Incumbents and newcomers have the same AI; what separates them is how much past success each has to protect, so inertia decides which SaaS companies survive.

Also touching this desk

Placed on another desk first; this one second.

• The minimum code below: container security from the top down, from the user story to the immutable line, measured on one real tool on Vaults & provenance
• Attacks rewritten as mandates: 28 supply-chain incidents, the column each one was missing, and why the next maintainer is an agent on Agent security & policy
• The human in the loop is a spectrum: how cheap it is to undo decides where a person belongs, and why the newsroom ships on its own while my email still waits for me on Agent security & policy
• A policy beside the prompt: a proposal that every agent takes a behaviour policy as an input, with enforcement and liability attached, and why aviation and payments say the vendors should want it on Agent security & policy
• Stop the bleeding, then ask for it back: a helper, an agent and a friendly letter for the subscriptions you keep and do not use on Agent security & policy
• The key is the billing system: VoiceDebrief, a product with no server, the one thing it cannot sell, and who could let it on Building with agents
• The agent is the reader: why agents will pay for graphs, personas and signed claims, because it is cheaper than not paying on The future of news
• Pay after you read: how a reading meter became a working business model in one afternoon, one release at a time on The future of news
• The infographic bake-off: which image model for which job, judged blind on 10 October 2026 on The future of news
• Pay to keep your persona: readers should pay because it helps them, not because they feel they should on The future of news
• Going live with the reading meter: pay for what you read, go below zero if you like, and the numbers we will check in eight weeks on The future of news
• A meter in the browser: a penny a page, a history you keep, and a site that picks for you on The future of news
• Who are you protecting against? Draw the security line where the attacker is, not above it on Agent security & policy
• Every mistake added a rule: complexity, agents, and the way back to shipping on Building with agents
• The proof moved up, the homepage after the rebuild, next to the before pictures on Vaults & provenance
• The proof is two clicks behind the claim, what the homepage gets wrong, and the fix on Vaults & provenance

Subjects on this desk

The controlled vocabulary: each subject belongs to one desk.

Startups and early access · 11 Pricing and economics · 12 Wardley maps · 15 Open source and open licences · 16 Strategy and positioning · 9 Supply chains · 9