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Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your weekly tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

Here’s the plan:

• Tech News Takes — super-short analysis and commentary

• Tool of the Week — tools you’ll find useful

• Strategy Tips — strategy nuggets (for business and life)

• F/T Shoutouts — sharing launches, tech events, and other reads

The EU's Starlink Response

Plus: OpenAI's Launch Streak; Say Bye to Junk Fees

⚡ Tech News Takes ⚡

OpenAI-Palooza

• What’s up: Today is day 11 of a 12-day streak of product launches for the company. Dubbed “The 12 Days of OpenAI”, the product launches have included announcements big (like the collaborative “Canvas” for working on queries and tasks with teammates) and small (like a Santa voice for the realtime voice chat feature).

• So what: Two things stick out here. First, it’s a refreshing approach to product launches. We’ve seen companies ship updates all the time (ex. Google), or put them in a single keynote (ex. Apple), but this 12-day format is new. It definitely seems to be driving strong press coverage, since most publishers are linking/expanding articles day-by-day (like a tweet thread vs. a single summary tweet). But my second takeaway is that nobody is safe from OpenAI. With Canvas and other project-like features, they’re making the teams behind creative tools like Adobe, Canva, and Figma even more nervous than before. Notion might even be feeling the heat.

The EU’s Starlink Response

• What’s up: The EU just re-started a project — called IRIS² — to build a 280-unit satellite constellation. They’ve committed $11B+ in funding and aim to finish by 2030, with use cases for the government and commercial services. As the director general of the European Space Agency put it “In an increasingly complex geopolitical world, ensuring resilient, secure and fast governmental communications is essential…”.

• So what: This project and the director’s quote seem like a tailor-made response to Elon, who the world has had to rely on to fill communications gaps in Ukraine during their invasion by Russia. But for this IRIS² project to be successful, it needs to do two things well. First, it needs to focus on meeting a different customer need than what Starlink is doing — focusing on security-conscious government customers feels right. That might mean ditching the commercial plans. Second, it needs to learn from Starlink. There’s a reason Starlink has built thousands of satellites… not hundreds. So IRIS² might need to scale-up their plans to make a network fast and robust enough to accomplish their goal.

Junk Fee Transparency

• What’s up: Junk fees can no longer be hidden when customers are booking concert tickets and hotels, according to a new FTC rule. Instead, companies will need to disclose total prices up front, giving customers transparency. The FTC estimates the rule will save Americans 53M hours per year in time spent researching prices to uncover fees.

• So what: As a customer, this is great. By bringing those fees to the forefront, companies will have to compete on the merits (costs, quality, or other criteria) — rather than running a bait and switch on customers. But on a side note, it’s interesting to see regulators pushing for something that customer-obsesssed companies in a competitive tech sector should probably do on their own…. As one example, we’ve written before about Airbnb’s seasonal product updates. One of their flagship changes a few years ago was to bring fees forward and work on decreasing prices. If companies in a sector don’t feel compelled to address obvious customer feedback, it makes me wonder how competitive that sector really is!

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🧭 Strategy Tips 🧭

The EU’s Starlink Response

Today's strategy tip is all about being first.

Specifically, we’ll dive deeper into the competition between Starlink and the EU’s IRIS² satellite project, using first-mover concepts to see what advantages each project has.

As always, let’s start by understanding the high-level concept. You’ve heard of first-mover advantages, right?

Well, there are definitely benefits to being first to market, but there can be benefits to not being first too.

Benefits of being a first-mover:

• Build brand recognition – you can quickly become the face of the category, making customer acquisition and growth much easier (ex. Kleenex, ChatGPT)

• Learn before you compete – you can take the time to experiment, learn, and become more efficient before the competition heats up

• Create moats – as users spend time/money, accumulate data, and learn to love your company, they are less likely to switch

Benefits of being a late-mover:

• Differentiation – you can counter-position your brand or product against the first-mover, speaking more directly to an audience they’ve overlooked or a feature they missed

• Learn from first-mover – you can avoid the costly, time-consuming pitfalls they struggled through, starting immediately with the approaches that worked best

• Exploit new trends – you can quickly lean-in to shifting customer preferences or new available tech, staying nimble to outmaneuver the entrenched first-mover

Alright, now let’s bring our two satellite projects back in and see what they are (or should be doing) to stick to the strategy.