Some of the more interesting #startups are able to create new tactical formations to solve big problems against superior incumbents.
At the onset of WWII aerial combat, a V-formation was a “standard” flying principle where a leader was surrounded by two inexperienced pilots on either side. This, in theory, works to protect the leader from an attack from both sides, but in practice makes for a cumbersome balance — two inexperienced pilots flying behind one seasoned.
On the other hand, two-by-two formation allows for two experienced pilots to lead two inexperienced; it is largely superior.
“For years the formation we flew with, three-plane sections, a leader and two wingmen, irked me. If you’re going to fight and do radical turns, this was an unwieldy formation. It was obvious that if we were going to be able to do something sudden to fool an enemy, we ought to throw away one of those planes and just have a two-plane section, which is what I did. At that time, everybody was flying three-plane sections, both in our country and Europe.”
An ability for a startup to break the status quo does not necessarily mean having superior equipment, but it does require one to build innovative defensible tactics and to scale them against a problem one is looking to solve within their market.
An ability to build a superior tactical formation within any TAM and say: “You attack from any direction you want.” That’s the beauty of building #startups that can later be transformed into defensible enterprises, rather than #gigeconomy enterprises, or #crypto schemes, such as Uber and Coinbase, that seek to profit from breaking one federal law or another.
