finance

Masterclass Series: Use This Framework to Move Fast and Make High-Quality Decisions

In many companies, the bottleneck isn’t necessarily in the execution of decisions. The real bottleneck is the excessive time people waste making decisions.

When I was Wattpad’s CEO, everyone in the company knew I had a simple 2×2 framework to empower the whole team to make fast, high-quality decisions – all by themselves!

The essence of this framework comes down to two questions:

• Is this decision reversible?

• Is this decision consequential?

These two factors create four types of decisions:

1. Reversible and inconsequential

2. Reversible and consequential

3. Irreversible and inconsequential

4. Irreversible and consequential

Examples of Each Type

1. Reversible and Inconsequential

This actually makes up the bulk of decisions in a company:

• Internal Slack messages? Delete them if you don’t like them.

• Marketing team’s benign social media copy? Remove the post if it doesn’t work.

• Small typo like the one in the above image? Yes, I purposely left the typo there. I look sloppy, but I could silently replace it with a better one when I have time.

• Small bugs in the product? If a bug fix causes other problems, revert the changes.

The list goes on. The trick is to empower each person in the company to make these decisions independently. I reinforced the same message to the Wattpad team over and over again:

From the most junior interns to the most senior leaders—you’re empowered to make the call all by yourself.

No boss to ask. No approval process. Just do it!

The company moves fast when most decisions don’t require a meeting!

2. Irreversible and Inconsequential

Here’s an example:

At one point, we ran out of space at Wattpad’s Toronto HQ and needed overflow space. We found a small office—just a few hundred square feet with a couple of meeting rooms—in the building right next door. The location was perfect, but the space itself? Just okay.

The problem was the lease—it was relatively long. Once we signed, we couldn’t back out. That limited our flexibility (irreversible), but we knew that if we needed more room, we could always find another expansion space. The cost was small in the grand scheme of things (inconsequential).

Given our growth, there was little downside to signing the lease. So we moved fast, signed the deal, and moved on to the next item on the to-do list.

For this type of decision, you can still move fast. Just be careful—double-check the lease for any hidden “gotchas.” It’s not about if we sign or not. We will sign, but we just want to make sure the bases are covered before we do.

You’d be surprised how much time people waste on indecision. Just make the call and do the due diligence!

3. Reversible and Consequential

A perfect example? A big product release.

Sonos’ poorly executed product release is a great case study. (See my blog post Masterclass Series: Complete Redesign That Actually Works for all the details.)

When done properly, product releases can be very consequential but still reversible. At Wattpad, we released high-risk software all the time—but always with a way to roll back if things didn’t work.

We knew how to press the undo button!

For these kinds of decisions, move fast and make the call—but monitor the outcome and always be ready to press undo.

Important: How to Increase the Quality of These Decisions

For both Irreversible and Inconsequential decisions and Reversible and Consequential decisions, always ask:

Is there any way to make this decision more reversible or less consequential?

If you can tweak the decision to minimize fallout—no matter how small—do it. It will save time and stress down the road.

4. Irreversible and Consequential

Many of these are leadership-team-level or CEO-level decisions.

They’re rare but also the hardest to make. They require a lot of context, consideration, and, sometimes, choosing between two bad options. Occasionally, you get a good one and choose between a few great choices.

The ultimate example for me?

Whether to take the company public, maintain the status quo and keep going, or accept an acquisition offer.

You all know the decision I made.

Sometimes, knowing which quadrant a decision falls into is an art. But imagine if we didn’t have this framework—slow decision-making would have ground the company to a halt.

The key to moving fast isn’t just execution—it’s deciding fast, too.

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This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.


The Three Phases of Building a Great Tech Company: Technology, Product, and Commercialization

There are three distinct phases in the journey of building a great tech company: technology, product, and commercialization. These phases are sequential yet interconnected and sometimes overlap. Needless to say, mastering each is critical to the company’s eventual success. However, it’s important to recognize their differences.

• Building technology is about founders creating what they love. It’s driven by passion and expertise and often leads to groundbreaking innovations.

• Building a product is about creating something others love to use. This is where usability and solving real problems come into focus.

• Commercialization is about building something people will pay for and driving revenue. This phase transforms users into paying customers or finds someone else to pay for it, such as advertisers.

These phases are related but distinct. Great technology doesn’t guarantee anyone will use it, and a widely-used product doesn’t always lead to revenue. I’ve seen many technologists create incredible technologies no one adopts, as well as popular products that fail to commercialize effectively (though it’s rare for a product with tens of millions of users to fail entirely).

For deep tech companies, these phases often have minimal overlap and unfold sequentially. The technology might take years to develop before a usable product emerges, and commercialization may come even later.

In contrast, shallow tech B2B SaaS products often see complete overlap between the phases. For example, a subscription model is typically apparent from the outset, and the tech, product, and commercialization phases blend seamlessly.

Wattpad is also a good example of how these phases can play out differently. Initially, we built our technology and product hand in hand, creating a platform loved by millions of users. However, its commercialization—whether through ads, subscriptions, or movies, the three revenue models we had—was deliberately delayed. Many people assumed we didn’t know how to make money without understanding this counterintuitive approach (but of course, we purposely kept some of our strategies under wraps). This approach allowed us to use “free” as a potent weapon to dominate—and eliminate—our competitors in a winner-takes-all strategy. Operating for years with minimal revenue was clearly the right decision for the market dynamics and our long-term goals. More on this in a separate blog post.

Given this variability, asking, “What is your revenue?” must be thoughtful and context-specific. For some companies, the absence of revenue may be an intentional and brilliant strategy. For others, insufficient revenue could signal serious trouble. It all depends on the company’s stage, strategy, and goals. Understanding the sequence, timing, and specific needs of a business model is crucial for both investors and entrepreneurs. Zero revenue could be a blessing in the right context. On the other hand, pushing for revenue growth—let alone the wrong type of revenue growth—can be fatal, a scenario we’ve seen many times.

At Two Small Fish Ventures, we are very thoughtful and experienced investors. We understand that starting to generate revenue—or choosing not to generate revenue—at the right time is one of the secrets to success that very few people have mastered. We practise what we preach. Over the past two years, all but one of TSF’s investments have been pre-revenue.

No revenue? No problem. In fact, that’s great. Bring them on!

P.S. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.