Aceable · Product Strategy
Shots on Goal
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Aceable · Product Strategy

Shots onGoal.

When shots get cheap, take more shots.

A case for taking more product bets that solve real customer problems — and growing without paying for every lead.

Blake Garrett  ·  for Product + Leadership
Where we are

Growth is the problem. And the lever we lean on is tapped out.

The near-term number gets won on conversion, AOV, and demand we own.
What just changed

At the same time, the cost to build collapsed.

Curve 1 — solving a customer problem

A useful tool used to be a project. Now it's weeks, sometimes days.

ThenMonths of engineering + product + design, fighting for a roadmap slot.
NowWeeks to days, one to three people, no roadmap fight.
Curve 2 — courses + regulatory approval

Cheap enough that a course can be marketing, not just margin.

ThenHeavy capex and long lead times per state and SKU.
NowA fraction of the cost — cheap courses can lead-gen the bigger business.
A cheap course can be lead-gen for the bigger business — and still potentially pay for itself.
The math

When a shot costs a week instead of a quarter, you take more shots.

Old world
A bet ≈ a quarter + a pod2–4 / yearSo every one of them has to hit.
New world
A bet ≈ one builder-week20–40 / yearSo most of them can miss.
Same hit rate. ~10× the winners. Less total spend. We don't need to get smarter — we need more shots.
Illustrative, to show the shape of the change — not a budget.
The real risk

Doing nothing is the riskiest bet we're running.

Downside of a shot
A few days to weeks.
Bounded. Known. Cheap to absorb.
Downside of standing still
The plan — and a closing window.
Unbounded. Today we concentrate the whole growth number on channels we know have challenging economics. That's one big, high-variance bet.
A spread of cheap shots is lower variance and higher expected value than the bet we're making today.
How we choose · the keeper

Aim for big problems that touch a lot of people.

Painful / joyfulIntensityMild
◁ old bar — you had to be sure on pain
◎ AIM HEREBig swings
Hazard gameAI for agents
Build to find outreach is there — test the pain cheaply
Low reachnot these bets — normal course of business
FewReach →Many · big markets
Impact = Reach × Intensity

Reach is the gate. If it won't touch a lot of people, it isn't one of these bets — that's normal course of business, and the whole left side stays red.

But inside the high-reach zone, you can stop demanding certainty on intensity. A bet is ~2 weeks now, not 3 weeks of research that still proves nothing. Aim for real pain — and when you're not sure, build to find out.

The reach problem, solved

We're state-by-state — so reach comes three ways, not one.

Deep

Go deeper where we already win.

One build touches a huge share of the business. Texas alone is a massive share of revenue — add CA, FL and NY and you've covered most of it.

Wide

Above the state line.

State-agnostic features and games touch every student instantly — no approval, no per-state capex.

Adjacent

Cheap courses + tools that feed us.

Babysitting, server, AI-for-agents — acquisition products that reach related cohorts and route them to revenue products.

The trap is the expensive middle: grinding on features and fixes that touch only a small number of customers.
The unlock

Every shot is also a way to get found.

01

Solve a real customer problem

→
02

Ship a tool or course — cheaply

→
03

It gets found in search + AI, and shared by word of mouth

→
04

New leads at near-zero marginal cost

→
05

Funds the next shot

This is owned demand — the opposite of paid. And it reframes the catalog: some things we build to earn, some to acquire cheaply and monetize downstream. Stop P&L-ing the lead magnet.
What's now possible

A glimpse of the space — not a roadmap.

Consumer / teen
Professional
Tools
Requirement & readiness checkers, permit practice
AI copilots / Claude skills for agents & brokers
Courses
Babysitting, CPR, lifeguard, e-bike
AI-for-agents, cheap CE, server, cosmetology
Illustrative — shown to make the space vivid, not to define it. The team will generate better ones than these.
Aceable student-journey roadmap with a new DISCOVER phase (00) and a word-of-mouth growth loop
To be clear

Two things this is not.

✕ Not "marketing owns growth."
Growth is all of ours. PMs, engineers, designers, LX writers, viz comm can all take a shot. Building is a growth lever the product/LX org controls directly.
✕ Not "stop expanding."
Course expansion is already growth. It's our fairway — it works, we keep funding it. These are additional shots outside the fairway.
So we go hard on these without robbing the expansion engine.
The bottom line

More shots
on goal.

The cost of failure has never been lower. The price of not trying has never been higher.
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