Jesse Pujji explains how alignment between product, market, stakeholders, and go-to-market strategy drives growth. Uber succeeded through tight alignment; the pre-Bezos Washington Post failed because its offerings didn't match what stakeholders wanted. He runs alignment reviews every 6-12 months with his team to catch misalignment early.
Every business, when aligned, grows effortlessly. We can use something like Uber. People want transportation on demand. They built this brand that was just known to be all you could pick up your phone and hit it. They opened in these cities, they got the drivers, they went aggressively to every city as fast as they could, and the people at the top became billionaires. And you kind of go like, wow, that all just aligned. Like, it all made sense, right? And let's think about a very misaligned example, like, say, the Washington Post prior to Jeff Bezos. It didn't actually matter how they allocated resources because Nobody wants what they were selling, but they tried a bunch of different things, you know, until Jeff Bezos bought it. And then the stakeholders were this old rich family who didn't give a shit, right? And like, so when you start to look at these things and how they come into alignment or misalignment, you start to really understand what's making your business work or not work from an ICP perspective. This methodology is really, really powerful when you apply it to your team. And this is what I use in all my offsites when we want to do every 6 to 12 months, we'll sit down and kind of go, where are we on these things and how aligned or misaligned are they?
