DNA Drives Everything
The DNA of a company sets it up for success or failure years in advance. Bad DNA can leave you open to competitive threats that kill your business years down the line, and good DNA can take you all the way to a lucrative exit. Once your company has grown, it’s impossible to rewrite its DNA, so as a founder in the early days, you need to be stringent about what will define how you do business.

In the strand below, fill in what your DNA looks like, then fill in the DNA for your closest competitor, whether that’s a direct competitor or an incumbent you’re targeting. Think through the core features of your business that drive it forward and can’t change, such as how you track data, a key product feature, built-in SEO or something else. See what the differentiation looks like and think hard about how that DNA is going to have an impact on your business long-term.


