Growth Strategy Board — Deep Dive

Seven Angles on
Every Growth Thesis

Seven specialist agents deliberate under time and budget constraints to stress-test a client's growth thesis from every angle. The output is a 90-day roadmap with ranked initiatives, revenue projections, and execution assignments.

Board Composition

Who's in the Room

Seven advisors with deliberately conflicting biases. Each optimizes for a different dimension of growth. The orchestrator — Growth Strategist — runs on Opus 4.6. All board members run on Sonnet 4.6.

Growth Strategist Opus 4.6 REV Revenue Architect PRC Pricing Analyst MKT Market Scout CMP Competitive Intel CUS Customer Voice OPS Operations Realist DIG Digital Strategist DASHED = TENSION PAIRS
Speed & Monetization

Revenue Architect

Find the fastest path to revenue lift. Impatient with infrastructure that doesn't generate revenue.
Optimizes Revenue velocity — dollars per unit of effort Fears 90 days on infrastructure with zero revenue impact Convinced by Revenue data, pricing experiments, conversion metrics
“I don't care about the funnel until someone shows me the conversion rate at each step. Optimizing a leaky bucket is cheaper than filling it faster.”
Margin Optimization

Pricing Analyst

Challenge current pricing. Most SMBs undercharge because they price on cost, not value.
Optimizes Revenue per customer, margin expansion Fears Leaving money on the table with flat pricing Convinced by Willingness-to-pay data, price test results
“Before we spend $5K on ads, can we test a 15% price increase on new signups? If conversion holds, that's pure margin with zero acquisition cost.”
Opportunity-Seeking

Market Scout

Identify adjacent markets and underserved segments the client isn't seeing.
Optimizes Addressable market expansion Fears Staying trapped in a shrinking or saturated segment Convinced by Organic demand signals, customer referral patterns
“The current market is fine, but there's a bigger one next door. 30% of their signups are freelance designers — that's not a bug, that's a market.”
Buyer Psychology

Customer Voice

Represent the actual buyer. The antidote to internal bias.
Optimizes Customer adoption, willingness-to-pay Fears Building for the business instead of the buyer Convinced by Customer interviews, usage data, churn reasons
“Revenue Architect wants annual contracts. But 60% of customers are month-to-month freelancers. This will increase churn, not revenue.”
Threat-Aware

Competitive Intel

Map where the client can win — and where they can't. Prevent blind charges into entrenched spaces.
Optimizes Competitive positioning and defensibility Fears Walking into a market where incumbents will crush us Convinced by Market share data, win/loss reasons
“Before we charge in, let me show you who's already there and why they haven't been beaten.”
Feasibility & Capacity

Operations Realist

Stress-test every recommendation against actual execution capacity. Speaks last in final statements.
Optimizes Execution probability — will this actually get done? Fears Beautiful roadmaps that collapse in week 2 Convinced by Realistic resource plans, phased rollouts
“This is a 5-person team already behind on their current roadmap. Pick one. Do it well. Then we talk about the next one.”
Channel ROI

Digital Strategist

Which digital channels move the needle fastest? Web, SEO, paid, social, email, content.
Optimizes Customer acquisition efficiency Fears Spreading budget across too many channels Convinced by CAC data, conversion rates, channel benchmarks
“The client has 3,000 email subscribers they haven't emailed in 4 months. That's the fastest revenue opportunity in the room.”
Adversarial Design

Why They Fight

Four deliberate tension pairs force genuine disagreement. The value comes from forced conflict, not consensus. Each pair embodies a real strategic trade-off that every SMB faces.

Revenue Architect
vs
Operations Realist
“Grow fast” vs “Can they handle it?”
Revenue Architect “A 20% price increase gets 35% of the way to target with zero additional production.”
Operations Realist “Who's implementing this? If the answer is 'the founder,' we've already lost.”
Market Scout
vs
Competitive Intel
“Opportunity everywhere” vs “Incumbents own this”
Market Scout “Nobody is serving the 10-50 employee bracket well. That's where the client wins.”
Competitive Intel “Notion and Linear are already there with free tiers. We're bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Pricing Analyst
vs
Customer Voice
“Charge more” vs “They won't pay that”
Pricing Analyst “There's a $149 tier hiding in this product that captures surplus value without losing the base.”
Customer Voice “Nobody's paying $149 for something that takes a half-day to set up. Fix onboarding first.”
Digital Strategist
vs
Revenue Architect
“Build the funnel” vs “Close what's in front of you”
Digital Strategist “The website converts at 1.2%. Before we spend on traffic, we fix the conversion path.”
Revenue Architect “Show me the version that puts money in the bank in 90 days.”
Orchestration

Who Drives

The Growth Strategist is the integrator. They hold the client's full picture while forcing the board to stress-test every assumption. Runs on Opus 4.6 for maximum reasoning depth.

1

SMB Reality Check

Every recommendation must pass: “Can a 5-person team actually do this in 90 days?”

2

Revenue-First Sequencing

Under $50K MRR, revenue-generating moves beat infrastructure moves. Always.

3

One Big Bet + Two Quick Wins

One initiative that moves the needle meaningfully, plus two fast wins that build momentum and fund the big bet.

4

Constraint Respect

Never recommend something requiring resources the client doesn't have. Stretch is OK. Fantasy is not.

Questions the Orchestrator Presses On

  • What is the single highest-leverage move, and what are we NOT doing to fund it?
  • Is this growth or just activity?
  • Can the client's team actually execute this with their current capacity?
  • What's the fastest path to measurable revenue impact?
  • Are we solving the client's real problem or the problem we wish they had?

Runtime Variables

OBJECTIVE_FUNCTIONHighest-leverage growth moves within actual constraints
TIME_HORIZON_PRIMARY90 days
TIME_HORIZON_SECONDARY6–12 months
CORE_BIASLeverage and feasibility — big impact, realistic execution
RISK_TOLERANCEModerate — SMBs can't absorb large failures
DEFAULT_STANCE“What is the single move that creates the most revenue with the least resource drain?”
Pre-Deliberation

Intelligence Gathering

Before the board meets, researcher agents gather live market data via web search. Their findings are written to the brief directory and injected into the deliberation as context.

Market Researcher

Market size, growth trends, customer segments, adjacent opportunities, geographic opportunities.

Feeds → Market Scout

Competitive Researcher

Direct competitors, indirect alternatives, pricing landscape, strengths/weaknesses, positioning gaps.

Feeds → Competitive Intel, Pricing Analyst

Digital Researcher

Web presence, SEO landscape, social media, industry benchmarks, channel opportunities.

Feeds → Digital Strategist

Generalist Researcher

All three domains in one pass: 35% competitive, 35% market, 30% digital. Used when time or budget is tight.

Feeds → All members
BRIEF Client context RESEARCHERS Market Competitive Digital run in parallel FINDINGS research-*.md added to brief dir BOARD deliberates
The Session

How a Deliberation Runs

The orchestrator drives the session through a structured loop. All targeted board members respond in parallel. The session ends when the orchestrator is satisfied or constraints force a wrap-up.

READ Brief + Client Context Frame converse("all") DELIBERATION LOOP 1. Collect positions 2. Challenge weak arguments 3. Exploit tension pairs 4. Targeted follow-ups 5. Check constraints converse("all") & converse(name) rounds Final Statements end_deliberation() OPS speaks last MEMO write + edit tools CONSTRAINTS TIME 3 min — 8 min BUDGET $1.50 — $8.00

Tools Available to the Orchestrator

converse(to, message)

Send a prompt to one member, an array of members, or "all". All targeted members respond in parallel.

end_deliberation(message)

Wrap the meeting. Collects final statements from all members. Operations Realist speaks last.

write + edit

Produce the final memo after deliberation ends. Written to the client's memos/ directory.

Constraint System

Time & Budget Guardrails

Constraints prevent infinite deliberation and force prioritization. The system tracks elapsed time and token cost in real-time, displayed as gauges in the TUI.

Time
0 min 3 min 8 min
Budget
$0 $1.50 $8.00
Below Minimum

Deliberation must continue. Not enough depth yet.

In Window

Orchestrator may end when satisfied with the debate quality.

Approaching Max

System signals wrap-up. Orchestrator starts converging.

At Maximum

Forced call to end_deliberation. No more rounds.

Artifacts

What Goes In, What Comes Out

Every deliberation transforms a structured brief into a comprehensive memo. The brief is the input contract; the memo is the deliverable.

Brief — Input

Four mandatory sections. Researchers may add context files alongside the brief.

  • 1
    Situation
    Current revenue, product mix, customer base, trajectory
  • 2
    Stakes
    Growth ceiling if nothing changes vs. upside potential
  • 3
    Constraints
    Budget, team size, timeline, technical and market limitations
  • 4
    Key Question
    The single highest-leverage question the board should answer

Memo — Output

Comprehensive deliverable. Becomes the agency's proposal to the client.

  • 1
    Executive Summary
  • 2
    Core Diagnosis
  • 3
    Top 3 Ranked Initiatives
    Priority, timeline, budget, impact, execution steps
  • 4
    90-Day Execution Timeline
  • 5
    Quick Wins
    Executable in week 1–2
  • 6
    Board Member Stances
  • 7
    Dissent & Unresolved Tensions
  • 8
    Trade-offs & Risks
  • 9
    Financial Model
  • 10
    The One Thing
    TL;DR for busy executives
Proof Point — Nordic Ceramics Studio

Artisan ceramics studio in Gothenburg. The board diagnosed a pricing problem disguised as a growth problem and recommended a 25–30% price increase as the critical first move.

95K → 115K
SEK/month projected (90 days)
$1.83
Deliberation cost
7.7 min
Session duration
6/7
Board consensus
Institutional Memory

How It Learns

Each board member has a personal scratch pad — a markdown file that accumulates patterns, observations, and risk notes across deliberations. The expertise block is injected into the agent's prompt at session start and updated after sessions.

What Gets Recorded

Patterns observed across clients. Which strategies work for which business types. Argument strategies that proved effective.

How It Works

Expertise files live in teams/growth-board/expertise/. Injected via {{EXPERTISE_BLOCK}} at session start. Agents update their own scratch pads.

The Implication

Deliberation quality improves over time without manual tuning. Each engagement makes the next one sharper.

Example: Pricing Analyst's Scratch Pad

pricing-analyst-scratch-pad.md — Nordic Ceramics, 2026-03-25

Key pattern: handcrafted artisan e-commerce

Artisan brands routinely underprice relative to their positioning. Nordic Ceramics at 350 SEK/mug is barely above Kähler (mass production, 100+ employees) at 299–399 SEK. The market signal is not “you're expensive” — it's “you're confused about your category.”

Silent price increases (no announcement) are the right default for small-catalog artisan stores. 30-day conversion monitoring is the test — if conversion holds within 5pp, the increase is absorbed.

Risk worth tracking: Founder psychology is the real execution risk. Founders who have underpriced for years have internalized the low price as part of their identity. This is not a pricing problem — it's a coaching problem.

Project Structure

Where Everything Lives

Team configurations are shared across all clients. Client data is isolated per engagement. Names are kebab-case, briefs are date-prefixed.

teams/growth-board/
  config.yaml              ← board config, constraints, brief sections
  agents/
    orchestrator.md        ← Growth Strategist (Opus 4.6)
    revenue-architect.md   ← board members (Sonnet 4.6)
    pricing-analyst.md
    market-scout.md
    customer-voice.md
    competitive-intel.md
    operations-realist.md
    digital-strategist.md
    researchers/
      market-researcher.md
      competitive-researcher.md
      digital-researcher.md
      generalist-researcher.md
  expertise/
    *.md                   ← per-member scratch pads

clients/<client-name>/
  context/                 ← business snapshot
  briefs/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>/
    brief.md               ← input
    research-*.md           ← researcher outputs
  deliberations/<session>/
    conversation.jsonl      ← full transcript
    tool-use.jsonl          ← all tool calls
  memos/<session>/
    memo.md                 ← final output

templates/
  growth-board-brief.md
  client-context.md