The alpha you won't get from a prompt

Every week, one company I admire gets a free, public growth play — the gap their own recent moves created, what closing it is worth, and the specific first move to make. No pitch, no paywall, no invoice.

Nominate a company See the method About Ryan
17 of 25
Top US broadband
providers closed
0% → 72%
US pay-TV share
built from zero
6× ARR
Americas,
partner-led
350
Active sites deployed
across 6 continents
The method

Six beats. Every play. No exceptions.

Opinions are cheap and everywhere. A play is different: it names a gap, sizes it, picks the first move, and says who should own it. If a beat can't be answered from public sources, the play doesn't get published.

The six beats came out of Stanford engineering and an HBS MBA, sharpened by more than 200 case studies I've lived rather than read across carrier, media and enterprise software — enough of them to know that growth rarely stalls on strategy. It stalls on ownership.

G

Gap

The specific thing their own recent moves created and haven't closed — sourced to a public fact, not a hunch.

What did they just do that they haven't finished?

R

Reason

Why it's still open: sequencing, incentives, org boundaries, or a motion nobody owns.

Why hasn't someone inside already fixed it?

O

Opportunity

What closing it is worth, sized against a real public benchmark or comparable.

What is this worth, and against what comparable?

W

Wedge

The first move, named. One partner, one channel, one segment, one acquisition target.

What's the single first move, by name?

T

Timing

Why now, and what closes the window — a competitor's move, a renewal cycle, a product cycle.

What makes this expire?

H

Handoff

Who inside the company should own it, and what their first 90 days looks like.

Whose desk does this land on, and what do they do first?

The plays

Published weekly.

One company a week. Each play runs on LinkedIn first and lands here after. Free to read, free to steal — if you ship one of these, I'd just like to hear about it.

PLAY #001

Palo Alto Networks

Sep 9 · Read →
PLAY #002

BILL

Sep 16 · Read →
PLAY #003

Glean

Sep 24 · Read →
PLAY #004

Zscaler

Oct 1 · Read →
PLAY #005

Instinct

Oct 7 · Read →
PLAY #006

Anthropic

Oct 15 · Read →
Who's writing these

Ryan Perry

Fifteen-plus years in business development and alliances — building partner ecosystems, channel motions and direct-sales playbooks for companies whose growth had to come from somebody else's distribution. Zoom, TiVo, Microsoft, and most recently as Global Alliances Chief and Americas GM at ULAP Networks. I've led global BD teams of two to six for over a decade, closed 17 of the top 25 broadband providers, and grew a region 6x.

The plays here are the same analysis I'd run inside a company, done in public and for free. Sometimes that's the start of a conversation about executing one. Usually it's just a good idea somebody else gets to use.

Alliances & BD Channel GTM Carrier & telco Stanford BS · Harvard MBA San Jose, CA

Know a company that needs one?

Nominate any company — yours, a competitor, or one you just find interesting. Tell me the gap you think you see. If it's a good one, it becomes a play.

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