Charting a course in an unregulated industry, which is built on a rapidly evolving technology, it’s not easy. It’s like being on the frontier. Trial error is the only method, mistakes are penalised harshly, and people rely on their preconceptions to solve problems. I fondly remember times when in a span of three months, everything you know about your business and your prospective users would change, rendering your hard-coded plans obsolete. You’d instantly find yourself in need of a different game plan. This is a nuanced ball game where you need what I call a “nomadic strategy”.

In a mature industry, where all game rules are set and polished over a long period, you’re less anxious, because there are only a few things that can cause trouble to you. You only go down if you haven’t had PMF before your runway is out or an incumbent copies your business idea. That’s it. Well played, well defeated if you lose it. But at the frontier, many factors sit in your way which have the potential to bring you down. Undefined regulations, newly forming competition, and ever-changing technology: all brew backstage where you actually can hear them, while you are trying to keep your ship afloat.

When building a product in such a setting, you have to do more. First off, everything we know from the Web2 era regarding product development is on your to-do list. Following the design-thinking principles, you do user research, test and validate your assumptions, build a prototype, iterate it until you see traction, and constantly put resources into what makes sense for your users. On top of these, when at the frontier, you continuously think about how the services you provide will be perceived by your user base, would-be partners, and policymakers. All are critical since what policymakers think and say will eventually exert influence on your user base and partners, and what your user base experiences, positive and negative, will affect policymakers and partners. As you design and ship your solutions, the game gets multidimensional. On the one hand, you need to be in constant conversation with regulators to educate them about your services and more broadly about the underlying technology as most of the time they’ll be skeptical and only act upon something bad has happened. On the other, you’ll be in close touch with your users to understand their pain points to solve them quickly enough to not let anything get big to be seen as a fundamental problem. At the same time, you’ll also need to keep your ears close to the competition, as each day something big is happening in terms of underlying technology that powers your products and some incumbents suddenly decide to enter your market.

And to cap it off, you’ll feel responsible for shaping the industry’s thinking in a safe and sound way, which will result in you speaking up when it’s right to do so. Now, multiply all this if you’re thinking go global or multi-product, given that each jurisdiction will probably have its idea of defining and regulating your services given that there is no unanimous consensus established yet globally. Recruiting teams, having open communication with multiple regulators while understanding market dynamics and competition, setting up servicing entities and finding open-minded enough partners as you’re developing a frontier product makes it harder to launch it. It goes like this: you believe in something first, then you make teammates believe you to act, and then you convince users to believe what you believe will hold true. These three layers require constant grooming even just from the standpoint of believing something. This alone is an energy-intensive task for any.

All in all, you and everyone in your team have to develop a sense of situational awareness about the things that surround your business to act quickly or pivot if needed until the ground upon which you built your idea has its final form. The things that underpin your plans should not be set in stone but at the same time should be solid enough to house you if there is a strong wind. And your processes and tools, in other words, the things that make up your operational agility should have more “nomadic” traits as you may find yourselves simply packing up and making a camp somewhere else. This is what I call being “nomadic”, not minding leaving things behind to achieve something greater down the line. Being optimistic is deeply embedded in acting in such a way, not in a naive sense, but with complete conviction that greater things will be yours, thanks to the sacrifices you’ll have to make. I find the requirement of feeling okay about ambiguity in the workplace a bit of an overstatement when I see it in a job ad. But in uncharted territory, you are expected to get along with the idea. It’s not about feeling anxious about change, but more about not having separation anxiety about the things you accomplished and also being ready to make many bets simultaneously as you never know which steps you’ll take will be allowed by a larger community. Ambiguity is a derivative term, pushing for not getting too committed to your ideas, products, and solutions and being multi-layered in your plans to have leeway all the time.

It’s fun, it’s exciting, and exhausting at the same time. If you feel you’re friends with ambiguity, it’s like the ultimate ride one must surely try out. Your whole strategy is in your backpack, always ready to change shape and transform as the frontier’s fog lifts.