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A new entrant, as this pack uses the term, is a competitor that has arrived in your market with money it did not earn there, raised or carried from a parent, and is spending it to take customers you already have. The product is what the room talks about, because the product is what the room can see. The money is what decides how many customers the product can be given to below what serving them costs, and for how long. So the threat has a size, in customers, and the size is arithmetic: the entrant's money divided by what taking one customer costs it, capped at the customers its offer reaches. That cost is a fact about somebody else's business, what it spends winning a customer plus what it gives up on that customer a year for as long as it can hold its price, and in most companies no one has assembled it from the price list, the incentives and the sales hiring that carry it. This pack turns the response into a division and an annuity. What the money can take, times what one of those customers earns you a year over the horizon, is what holding costs. What the answer costs on every customer the entrant reaches, including the ones who were never leaving, plus what it costs once, is what answering costs. The decision reduces to the break-even funding, how much money the entrant would need before answering costs less than holding, which is a distance in somebody else's money, read against the last round and watched at the next. It names four readings, the money runs out first, answering costs less than what the money can take, the money is not the constraint, and buying it is cheaper than either, and a fifth response no room models, arriving first. It stops on two halts almost no company has met: what taking one customer costs the entrant, and how much money it has.
What is the New Entrant Strategy Pack
The New Entrant Strategy Pack is a complete decision-support kit for one question: a funded competitor has arrived, and what must they spend to take your customer? It is built around one organizing claim: the entrant's money can take only as many of your customers as it can afford at what taking one costs, and every response is priced against that number rather than against the product. Sixteen files carry it: the foundations, a concept deck, a scored decision wizard, an entrant model blank and worked, the moves at each reading, nine sourced responses, a fit worksheet, a roadmap template, a practitioner manual, a field checklist, and an orientation page.
The test that runs through every file
The entrant's money can take only as many of your customers as it can afford at what taking one costs, and every response is priced against that number rather than against the product. It is the argument in the deck, it becomes the wizard’s axes, it drives the model’s inputs, and it reappears as lines on the checklist. That is what makes 16 files a product rather than 16 documents.
The model resolves to one number you can negotiate with: The break-even funding — the money an entrant needs before answering it costs less than holding. It ships blank and worked, and every input is a named cell rather than a figure buried inside a formula, so the number arrives with its assumptions attached rather than on its own authority.
How to respond to a new competitor without pricing its demo
A new entrant arrives as a product, so the room prices the product. It has a valuation, a press cycle and a demo, and within a week somebody has proposed an answer as a necessity. What no one has is the two figures that would size the threat, and both are facts about the entrant's business rather than yours: what it costs the entrant to take one of your customers, and how much money it has for this market.
The first is what it spends winning a customer, plus what it gives up on that customer a year against your price, for as long as it can hold that price. It is readable from the entrant's price list, its advertised incentives and its sales hiring, and it is an afternoon. The second is its rounds added up, and it is an hour. Divide the second by the first, cap it at the customers the offer reaches, and you have what the money can take, which is what holding costs.
This pack sets that against what answering costs on every customer the entrant reaches, including the ones who were never leaving. Then the whole decision reduces to one figure: how much money the entrant would need before answering costs less than holding. That is the break-even funding, and it is a distance in somebody else's money, read against the last round and watched at the next one.
What is in the New Entrant Strategy Pack
- Foundations. The framework: why the money is the subject, the division and the annuity, the four responses that actually happen, and the halts.
- Concept deck. Twenty-three slides for a board or a competitive review, with nine sourced responses and what each does not establish.
- Decision wizard. Eight scored questions returning the band, the weakest answer, and either of the two halt conditions.
- Entrant model. Eleven candidate costs to take across the columns, from a quarter of today's estimate to twelve times it, and the break-even funding that decides it.
- Strategies and tactics. The moves at each of the four readings, two answers that are neither a price nor a feature, what to do when the model halts, and four ways to make the next entrant cheaper to judge.
- Case studies. Nine sourced responses — five answered and held, two answered and reversed, and two held and lost the base.
- Fit worksheet. The single page of record: the customers the entrant reaches, what one earns, what taking one costs the entrant, its money, and what answering and buying would cost.
- Roadmap template. Five phases with gates and owners, the assumptions register, a reporting change and a periodic review line.
- Practitioner manual. Counting the reached customers, contribution per customer, the cost to take, the entrant's money, pricing the answer, the board paper, six failure modes.
- Field checklist. The one-pager that survives outside the binder.
- About the package. What each file does and the order in which to run them.
Who the New Entrant Strategy Pack is for
A chief executive with a funded competitor on the agenda for two quarters and a response proposed for none of them with a price on it; a chief financial officer being asked to approve an answer costed on the customers at risk rather than on the base; a chief product officer whose roadmap is being rewritten around a demo; a head of strategy who knows no one has read the entrant's rounds; a board member reading a threat with no size; a private equity operating partner underwriting a business whose segment a funded entrant has just priced at half; and the adviser who would otherwise start from a blank page. It is worth buying when a real entrant is in front of you. It is not worth buying to read.
An honest note on fit
This is a kit for running a decision, not a research report and not a forecast. Worked examples use an explicitly fictional company with numbers tuned to teach rather than to flatter. In the worked case a maker of software for 24,000 auto-repair shops faces an entrant with $140m selling at half its price, and the room wants to match. Taking a shop costs the entrant about $22,700, so its money can take 6,167 shops, a quarter of the base, worth $139.1m over five years. That is the fact that gets it onto an agenda. It is not the decision: matching would cost $460.1m on all 24,000 shops, the entrant would need $462.9m before that changed, and a $55.3m feature build beats the same loss by $83.8m.
The evidence runs the other way from most packs, and the page says so. The nine cases carry what answers cost and what holding cost, and almost nothing on what an entrant paid per customer taken, so the cost to take is the pack's own contribution, labeled as analysis wherever it appears; the framework content is the larger share. Three limits are stated on the page rather than worked around. The model treats taken customers as gone for the whole horizon, which overstates what holding costs. It treats a full answer as keeping every customer the entrant reaches, and does not price what the entrant's product then wins on its own. And it holds the cost to take flat as the entrant grows, which is why the Model tab sweeps it rather than settling it.
Questions about the New Entrant Strategy Pack
- What numbers does the entrant model produce?
- Two headlines and twelve supporting rows. The first headline is what holding costs: the customers the entrant's money can take at the cost of taking one, and what they would have earned you over the horizon. The second is the break-even funding, how much money the entrant would need before answering costs less than holding. Around them: the cost to take, what the money can take as a count and as a share of the customers it reaches, what answering costs on every customer it reaches, the difference, the break-even cost to take, what buying the entrant would save against the cheaper of the other two, what holding costs in years of profit, and the entrant's money against your revenue. The Model tab sweeps the cost to take from a quarter of today's estimate to twelve times it, and one row turns from Yes to No where answering stops paying.
- A funded competitor has just launched against us. Should we match them?
- Not on that fact alone, and that is the whole point of the pack. A funded entrant and an entrant worth answering are different findings. In the worked case an entrant with $140m can take a quarter of a 24,000-customer base, which is $139.1m of contribution over five years, and matching its price would cost $460.1m, paid on the 17,800 customers who were never leaving. Holding wins by $321.0m, and a $55.3m feature build beats the same loss by $83.8m.
- How is this different from the Moat Anatomy pack and the Price War pack?
- The Moat Anatomy pack prices the gap a challenger faces before anybody arrives, and names which source produces it. The Price War pack prices a cut a rival has already made, matching against holding, unit by unit. This pack is the incumbent's response when a funded entrant arrives: it prices the entrant's money against the cost of taking one customer, and sets every response against that number, whether that is holding, answering, buying, or arriving first.
- What if the entrant is owned by a large company with unlimited money?
- Then the model gives its third reading: the money is not the constraint, the entrant can afford every customer it reaches, and the next round is not what to watch. The question becomes the product, and the pack says what to do in that case, which is to answer now where the answer costs less than the segment earns and to find a cheaper answer where it does not. BlackBerry and eBay in China are the two cases where holding against an entrant whose money was not the limit lost the base.
- Are the case studies real companies?
- Yes. Nine sourced responses: Meta's Reels against TikTok, Blockbuster against Netflix, Meta's purchase of Instagram, Google's AI Overviews, Microsoft Teams, BlackBerry against the iPhone, eBay in China against Taobao, Intuit's Free File, and Coca-Cola's New Coke. Each is dated, read through what arrived and what the response was, and each states what its evidence does not establish. Blockbuster is three records of one story and is counted once. The worked model, wizard, and worksheet use an explicitly fictional company, labeled as such on every file.
- Is this a subscription?
- No. One payment, one download, sixteen files, yours to keep and to use inside your organization under the license included in the pack.
- What is the New Entrant Strategy Pack?
- The New Entrant Strategy Pack is a decision-support kit for one question: A funded competitor has arrived; what must they spend to take your customer? It contains 16 files — foundations, concept deck, decision wizard, entrant model, strategies and tactics, case studies, fit worksheet, roadmap template, practitioner manual, field checklist, about the package — built around a single organizing test: the entrant's money can take only as many of your customers as it can afford at what taking one costs, and every response is priced against that number rather than against the product. It is what a leadership team uses to run the decision and leave a record of what they assumed, rather than a report about the topic.
- Who is the New Entrant Strategy Pack for?
- Anyone who has to make this call and answer for it: an operator or owner facing the decision, the executive team running it, the board or investor testing the reasoning, or an adviser who would otherwise build the framework from a blank page. It is worth buying when a real decision is in front of you. It is not worth buying to read.
- What is in the New Entrant Strategy Pack?
- 16 files in Word, PDF, PowerPoint and Excel: Foundations (Word + PDF) — The framework: why the money is the subject, the division and the annuity, the four responses that actually happen, and the halts. Concept deck (PowerPoint + PDF) — Twenty-three slides for a board or a competitive review, with nine sourced responses and what each does not establish. Decision wizard (Excel) — Eight scored questions returning the band, the weakest answer, and either of the two halt conditions. Entrant model (Excel, blank and worked) — Eleven candidate costs to take across the columns, from a quarter of today's estimate to twelve times it, and the break-even funding that decides it. Strategies and tactics (Word) — The moves at each of the four readings, two answers that are neither a price nor a feature, what to do when the model halts, and four ways to make the next entrant cheaper to judge. Case studies (Word) — Nine sourced responses — five answered and held, two answered and reversed, and two held and lost the base. Fit worksheet (Word, blank and worked) — The single page of record: the customers the entrant reaches, what one earns, what taking one costs the entrant, its money, and what answering and buying would cost. Roadmap template (Word) — Five phases with gates and owners, the assumptions register, a reporting change and a periodic review line. Practitioner manual (Word + PDF) — Counting the reached customers, contribution per customer, the cost to take, the entrant's money, pricing the answer, the board paper, six failure modes. Field checklist (PDF) — The one-pager that survives outside the binder. About the package (PDF) — What each file does and the order in which to run them.
- What number does the New Entrant Strategy Pack produce?
- The break-even funding — the money an entrant needs before answering it costs less than holding. The model ships blank and worked, and every input is a named cell rather than a figure buried inside a formula, so the number you take into a room arrives with its assumptions attached and can be argued with rather than merely believed.
- How is the New Entrant Strategy Pack delivered?
- As a single download of all 16 files, immediately after payment, with the same link sent by email. It can be downloaded 3 times and the link is valid for 30 days. There is nothing to install and no account to keep.