WORK · THE ARTIFACTS exhibits below use fictional company data

Nobody else shows you the bets they turned down.

Every engagement ships three layers. The deck your leadership sees. The report that holds the complete reasoning. And the working papers, where the method earns its keep. When your board asks how you know, you hand them the answer instead of defending a slide.

EXHIBIT 01 / THE SCORING
PLAYDISTINCTBELIEV.DEMANDDEFENS.OWNABLECLARITYSCORERISK
▸ the operating layer4.64.4 4.24.74.54.34.48med
the proof engine4.14.53.84.03.94.24.10low
the vertical wedge4.34.03.64.24.14.44.05med
category creation4.83.2 3.13.64.43.03.58high
the AI-native pivot2.92.12.42.02.62.22.36n/a
the enterprise-grade play2.63.02.81.92.13.12.58n/a
six criteria, weights printed · risk held separate, never averaged in = this score was challenged on review and the challenge is in the papers
02

The dropped-bets grid

A recommendation means nothing until you know what it beat.

the AI-native pivot

Ruled out in testing. The proof for "AI-native" does not exist yet, everyone is already saying it, and the recent companies that tried it without proof are the ones that got burned.

the enterprise-grade play

Ruled out in testing. On its own turf it looks identical to a rival thirty times its size, and the claim needs proof only that rival holds.

every rejected bet ships with the unabridged argument that ruled it out, in the working papers.
03

The 90-day proof plan

Positioning pays back in quarters, not on launch day. So every claim the chosen position needs but cannot yet back gets a proof to bank, a time box, and a walk-away line that tells you when to fall back.

MISSING PROOFPROOF TO BANKTIME BOXWHEN TO WALK AWAY
"cuts close time in half"2 named-customer case studies, audited numbers45 daysif no customer signs off by day 45, the claim drops to a range
the owned word in-markethomepage + outbound running the word, 90-day search lift measured90 daysif branded association does not move, tripwire fires at the check-in
the rule: nothing ships in-market until its proof row is banked or its fallback is chosen.
04

A working-papers spread

The layer that justifies the price. If you are the one who has to defend this decision upward, this is your ammunition. When the room asks "how do you know?", you answer with the full verdicts and the source behind every claim. You win the argument inside the building, and the company moves before the market moves first.

BET DOSSIER · PLAY 3 OF 8 · THE VERTICAL WEDGE

Claim tested: "the only close platform built for multi-entity retail." Test verdict: survives, with a raise. The wedge is defensible and the demand is verified in win/loss, but the believability score was raised ⬆ because the two reference customers are both pre-2024 and neither is multi-entity.

Owned-word test: "close" is contested by the incumbent's ad spend; "entity" is unclaimed across the field. Score rationale and the full transcript of the challenge follow.

source: run 2026-06-28
frameworks: dunford · sharp
analogs: 2 verified, 1 cautionary
raised on review ⬆
provenance: 14 claims, 14 sourced
this spread is one of eight. every play gets one, including the rejected ones.
05 / READ ONE FOR REAL
The public teardown is the sample.

Once a month I run the full engine on a public B2B company at a live positioning moment and publish the working. The splits, the scorecard, the bets, and the grid of what got ruled out. The client version gets the call. Client engagements stay private until a founding client trades a named case study, and then it appears here. Read one before you spend a dollar.

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