Values & Norms (SVE Slide)
Team Values:
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Build What Matters: Focus on structurally important problems at the intersection of technology, industrial capacity, and geopolitics
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Commercial Reality Over Intellectual Comfort: A good idea is only good if someone will pay for it within ~24 months
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Progressive Certainty: Narrow relentlessly; kill weak hypotheses quickly
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Long-Term Orientation: Optimize for durable impact and defensibility
Norms: Accountability
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Clear Ownership – Every workstream has a single directly responsible owner
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Revenue Test Discipline – If we cannot articulate buyer, budget, and path to revenue, we pivot
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Artifact-Driven Clarity – Force specificity through concrete outputs
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Bias Toward Action – Research must lead to decisions, not perpetual exploration
Norms: Communication
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Sharpen Language: Avoid vague narratives; define problem states precisely
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Surface Assumptions Explicitly: Separate known facts from hypotheses
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Intellectual Honesty: Challenge each other’s reasoning rigorously but constructively
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Synthesis > Information Dumping: Distill insights into decision-relevant conclusions
Norms: Decision Making
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Constraint-Driven Filtering: Software-first, clear buyer, macro tailwinds, <24-month revenue path
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Score Before Expanding: Evaluate ideas systematically before exploring adjacent spaces
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Default to Narrowing: Fewer ideas, deeper conviction
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Commit Decisively: Once criteria are met, move from analysis to building
Source: SVE application slide (TierZero_ValueAndNorms.pdf)