We are taught that building well starts with designing well. Get the strategy right, get the structure right, and the rest will follow. I have grown wary of that idea, because it asks you to be right before you have learned anything.
The whole idea fits on one page: two questions and four lines. No framework, no diagram. It looks too simple to be a strategy, and that may be exactly why it works.
The first question: what is the cheapest, quickest experiment that would teach me something important? The second: what can I subtract, aggressively, to remove what clearly doesn’t work?
The first is for what you do not know. The most important questions in a young company are unknowns: will this market pay, will this product hold under pressure, will customers trust us here? Thinking harder is cheap, but it is unreliable. Good tinkering works because the experiment is cheap, the feedback is quick, and failure does not seriously hurt you. If a test costs six months and ₦50m before you learn anything, you have not tinkered; you have built a fragile experiment. Shrink the cost of finding out, and you buy insight without betting the company.
The second is for what you already know, and here the instinct runs the wrong way. Businesses accumulate things: features, meetings, approval steps, vendors, reports. When something is not working, the reflex is to add another layer. Via negativa asks a different question: what would happen if we simply removed the thing causing the problem? Sometimes the best product improvement is removing friction. Sometimes the best cost decision is dropping a dependency you never needed. Sometimes the best management intervention is cancelling a meeting.
Put the two together and you can sort almost anything on your desk. Experiment where you don’t know; subtract where you already know something is harmful. Unknown: test it cheaply. Clearly harmful: remove it. Clearly useful: reinforce it. Potentially fatal: avoid it altogether.
Notice how little of this needs prediction. You do not have to forecast the market or guess the right strategy. You only have to be honest about which box something belongs in. Most of the damage I can imagine comes from putting things in the wrong box: treating an unknown as settled, or protecting something harmful because it has been around a long time.
That last category deserves a pause, because it keeps you in the game. Cheap experiments only work when the downside is survivable. In an industry where money moves and trust is the product, some mistakes do not come with a second attempt. You do not run a small test on something that can end you. You walk around it.
I should be fair to the other side. Some clutter carries weight you cannot see; a process that annoys you may exist because someone was once badly burned and not every unknown can be tested cheaply, because some bets demand full commitment. Subtraction without humility is just recklessness with a tidy desk. That is why the sorting matters: subtract where the evidence is clear, and test where it is not.
Still, I have come to think the greater danger for most builders is not removing too much. It is keeping too much, because removing feels risky and adding feels responsible. We call it diligence. Often it is fear with a calendar invite.
So here is what I would offer you, from one builder to another. You do not need a perfect system, and you do not need to see everything coming. Whether you are just starting or already tangled in your own layers, you need three things: a cheap way to learn, the nerve to cut what has stopped earning its place, and the discipline to stay away from what could finish you.
What are you protecting right now that you already know isn’t working, and what are you still guessing about that you could test by Friday?
About the Author
Bidemi Oke is the Chief Executive Officer of FlashChange, a fintech platform focused on secure digital asset exchange. He is an entrepreneur and vibrant leader, recognised for driving innovation and redefining access in the financial technology industry.