Issue No. 10. Black Swans Move Fast

Why Speed is Everything in a Hypergrowth World

Black Swans don’t stroll. They don’t give fair warning. They appear—sudden, silent, jarring—and then they move. Fast!

By the time you’ve finished your strategy deck, the market has shifted. By the time your budget clears, your competitor is eating your lunch and picking their teeth with your too slow responses. By the time consensus is reached, the game’s already changed.

If you’re working inside a Black Swan moment—hypergrowth, collapse, market upheaval—you can’t think in quarterly plans. You need to think in terms of acceleration, in compounding velocity, in weeks that feel like years.

If you’re competing against a Black Swan—whether it’s generative AI, retail media, DeFi (Deep Finance - the new ecosystem of diversified financial capability that's just around the corner), or a breakout product—you better know what you’re up against. These aren’t traditional competitors. They’re simply not playing the same game everyone else is.

The Hypergrowth Equation

Speed doesn’t just change how you work—it changes the math of your business.

In stable environments, the calculus is about efficiency:

• Margins
• Market share
• Optimization

But in hypergrowth, the math shifts to:

• First-mover advantage
• Viral loops
• Exponential scale
• Opportunity cost of waiting

Let’s take a look at some recent examples:

• ByteDance launched TikTok globally in 2017. By 2021, it was the most downloaded app on earth, surpassing Facebook. Legacy platforms were caught flat-footed—not because they lacked resources, but because they moved too slow.
• Zoom scaled from 10M daily users in 2019 to 300M in April 2020. It didn't grow during the pandemic—it exploded. Competitors spent years catching up on reliability, scale, and trust.
• OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached 100 million users in 2 months. The fastest consumer product adoption in history. Companies are now rewriting roadmaps, workflows, even org charts just to keep up.
• DeepSeek, the Chinese open-source LLM, launched in 2024, trained a 236B-parameter model and released it publicly in under six months. While Western firms debated governance and access, DeepSeek captured the imagination of developers across Asia—positioning China not as a fast follower in AI, but as a global co-leader. The launch wasn’t just lightning fast—it was defiant, strategic, and very intentionally symbolically global.

Five Ways to Survive and Thrive in a Speed-Driven Landscape

If you’re operating in a fast-moving environment (and who isn't these days?) —whether you're actually inside the organization that's driving the disruption or trying to keep pace—you need new muscles. Here’s what they look like:

1. Move Before You’re Ready

In hypergrowth, “perfect” is the enemy of “present.” Launch the beta. Ship the product. Put the idea in market.

Speed compounds. The sooner you're out there, the faster you learn. The more you learn, the more you grow.

Lesson: Readiness is a myth. Traction reveals the path.

2. Build for Agility, Not Permanence

In fast environments, infrastructure ages quickly. So build systems that adapt—not monuments that endure.

• Use modular platforms
• Shorten planning cycles
• Embrace experimentation

Lesson: It’s better to be adjustable than inflexible at scale.

3. Ruthlessly Prioritize Learning Velocity

In hypergrowth, who learns fastest wins.

Set up systems to capture feedback, test ideas, iterate, and kill what’s not working—fast. A/B testing isn’t just a tactic; it’s a philosophy.

Lesson: Treat insight generation as a supply chain—always moving, always replenishing.

4. Empower Decision-Making at the Edges

Speed doesn’t come from the top. It comes from distributed authority.

Train teams to make smart, independent decisions without waiting for approvals. Create trust through clarity of direction and guardrails.

Lesson: The more empowered your teams are, the faster you move.

5. Be Brutally Honest About Competitive Clock Speed

You’re not just competing on product or price. You’re competing on time.

Ask yourself:

• How fast can we execute a pivot?
• How long does it take to deploy new features?
• Can we respond to customer feedback in hours, not weeks?

Lesson: If they’re operating at 10x speed, your 10% or even that 20% improvement you're hoping for absolutely won’t matter.

Final Thought: Don’t Mistake Movement for Progress

Speed without direction is chaos. Direction without speed is irrelevance. The key is knowing when to shift from exploration to exploitation—and having the organizational reflexes and will to do it on instinct.

Black Swans move fast.

If you’re chasing one, ride the currents and embrace speed. If you’re facing one, move or prepare to be moved.