The Big Bets Doc and the No List
An annual one-pager naming the three or four bets you will make and, immediately after, the tempting things you are explicitly refusing.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 87%
Shaan Puri writes a big bets doc for every business every year. Each bet is written as a full sentence containing the problem, the intervention and the expected outcome. His inventory example reads: forecasting today is just him looking at a spreadsheet making up numbers based on what he hopes happens, other people have certainly solved this, so the bet is to hire two people and lower waste from X to Y. He caps it at three or four bets. Immediately after writing them he writes the no list: the things that could totally be talked into, that are easily justifiable, and that are being refused this year precisely so the bets above can happen. He then treats each bet as a commercial, shrinking it into a slogan or jingle for the owner's role, repeating it roughly a hundred times over three months, and tying bonus and performance assessment to it. The pattern is borrowed from Peter Thiel at PayPal, where everyone had exactly one priority.
Origin
Grew out of Shaan's self-described shiny-object syndrome, and was sharpened by Peter Thiel's PayPal rule that every person has one priority at any time.
Core principles
- 01Three or four bets a year, no more
- 02A bet is a sentence: problem, action, expected outcome
- 03The no list is written right after the bets, not instead of them
- 04Say no to things you could easily justify, that is the whole point
- 05One person, one priority, repeated until it is memorable
How to run it
- 1
Name three to four bets for the year
Decide the small number of things you will invest time, money and effort in and try to do really, really well. Anything beyond four is not a bet, it is a wish list.
- 2
Write each bet as a full sentence
Include the current broken state, why it is broken, what you will do about it, and the outcome you expect. Shaan's inventory bet names the spreadsheet guesswork, the hire of two people, and the waste reduction from X to Y.
Pro tip Write it in plain English, as if explaining to someone outside the business.
- 3
Write the no list immediately after
List the things you could totally talk yourself into this year and are explicitly refusing so that the bets above can happen. The no list only works if the items on it are genuinely tempting.
Watch out A no list full of obviously bad ideas is decoration. Put the appealing ideas on it.
- 4
Walk every new hire through the list
When bringing people on, sit down with the big bets list and show them exactly what the business is doing this year, so focus is a team property rather than a founder's private preference.
- 5
Compress each bet into a slogan and enforce it
Shrink the owner's bet down to something like a jingle or slogan for their role, repeat it perhaps a hundred times over three months, and make it the basis of bonus and performance assessment. Mirror Thiel's rule that everyone has exactly one priority.
Pro tip Treat it like a commercial: the goal is that the owner wakes up remembering it.
In the wild
For his e-commerce business, Shaan wrote a bet stating that they are bad at inventory management, that forecasting is currently just him looking at a spreadsheet and making up numbers based on what he hopes will happen, and that other people have certainly solved this problem already.
→ The bet became: hire two people who know how to do this, and lower waste from X to Y.
He applies the same exercise to the podcast, writing out why hiring Ari and launching the clips channel were bets worth the effort, reasoning that he himself likes listening to just the best parts on YouTube so others might too.
→ Anything he invests effort, time or money into gets written out as an explicit bet first.
Common mistakes
Writing bets without a no list
A yes list on its own does not create focus. Without naming the justifiable alternatives you are refusing, they get added back in over the year and the bets get starved.
Keeping the bets in the founder's head
If the team cannot recite their one priority, focus does not survive contact with the week. Shaan makes the bet memorable through relentless repetition and ties compensation to it.
Defaulting to no on everything
Sam Parr's counterexample: at the Hustle he said no to launching multiple newsletters because he had been told to focus, and a competitor who did launch more scaled revenue significantly faster. The no list is meant to be deliberate, not reflexive.
Is it for you?
Best for
Operators running multiple businesses or initiatives who keep getting pulled into justifiable side quests
Not ideal for
Teams still searching for product-market fit, where the right move is to keep trying angles rather than committing a year in advance
From the transcript
“every year that's called the the big bets doc, which is basically like we we are going to make some bets this year.”
“So, I write the big bets and it's like here's the three to four big bets that we're going to make.”
“And then I'll make the no list right before that.”
“Everybody at any time has one priority.”
From the episode
CEO Lessons: Bulls**t Mission Statements, Firing People & Saying ‘NO'
CEO Lessons