The Operating System
Five steps. Two cycles. One system that replaces guesswork with data.
LEVERS is the operating system behind Retrocause. Built by Amos Schwartzfarb across 1,000+ startups at Techstars and refined inside companies from pre-revenue to $10M+ ARR. This is what the fellowship teaches you to run. Read it now. Apply it this week.
Step 1
W3 — Why, Who, What
Ruthless clarity on why your business exists, who you serve, and what you offer — framed as the problem you solve, not the features you ship.
Why
Your purpose beyond making money. The emotional promise to your customer. Skiptown didn't exist to board dogs — they existed so pet owners never had to feel guilty about leaving their pets.
Who
Your specific, narrowly-defined ideal customer. Not "pet owners" (that's 70% of American households). "Urban professional pet parents who treat their pets like family and feel guilty about long work hours." That person can read your website and think you're in their head.
What
Your offering framed as the problem solved, not a feature list. "A place where your pet has a better day than you do" beats "boarding, daycare, grooming, and training" every time. Features are commodities. Outcomes are not.
The outcome: When W3 is clear, every downstream decision — marketing message, sales script, feature priority, hire/fire — has a simple test: does this serve our Who in pursuit of our Why?
Step 2
Revenue Formula
Your revenue is not one number. It's a mathematical formula with variables you can measure and move. Write it down and the growth levers become obvious.
The concept
Revenue = the multiplication of 3–5 operational inputs. For e-commerce: Traffic × Conversion Rate × Average Order Value × Purchase Frequency. For SaaS: Leads × Trial Rate × Trial-to-Paid Conversion × Average Contract Value. Every business has a formula — most founders have never written theirs down.
How to build yours
Start with last quarter's actual revenue. Work backwards through the steps a customer took to pay you. Each step is a variable. Keep decomposing until each variable is something a specific person on your team can measurably influence this week.
The payoff
Once you have the formula, you can see which variable — when improved by 10% — moves revenue the most. That's your highest-leverage lever. You stop spreading effort across "try everything." You focus on the one thing that actually moves the number.
The outcome: Business.com found their hidden growth lever inside an existing variable they weren't even tracking. No new spend required. Just a clearer picture of what drives revenue.
Step 3
Assumptions & Prioritization
Every business is built on assumptions. Most founders have never written them down. The ones who win are the ones who test the most dangerous assumptions before they burn cash on them.
The Assumption Audit
List every belief your business depends on: customers will pay this price, this channel will scale, this feature drives retention, this persona has the problem we think they have. Aim for 30–50 assumptions. The act of writing them down is half the value.
The scoring matrix
Score each assumption on two axes: risk if wrong (1–5) and confidence it's true (1–5). Test the high-risk / low-confidence assumptions first. These are the ones that — if wrong — sink the business. Everything else waits.
Minimum viable tests
The test should cost a fraction of acting on the assumption. A landing page test before building a feature. A five-customer survey before launching a new segment. A one-week pilot before signing a year-long contract.
The outcome: Every dollar spent on an untested high-risk assumption is a gamble. This step turns gambles into experiments — and experiments into evidence.
Step 4
KPIs That Matter
Not vanity metrics. Not dashboard theater. The specific numbers tied directly to your Revenue Formula that predict — not describe — whether your business is growing.
Vanity vs. actionable
Total signups is a vanity metric. Signup-to-paid conversion rate is actionable. Website traffic is vanity. Traffic-to-lead conversion by source is actionable. If no one can take an action in response to the metric, it's dashboard theater.
Leading vs. lagging
Revenue is lagging — by the time it moves, the cause is weeks old. Leading indicators (demos booked, trial activation rate, week-one retention) tell you where revenue will be in 30–90 days. A good dashboard has 2 leading for every 1 lagging.
The KPI hierarchy
Every person on your team knows their number. The CEO's number is revenue. The Head of Sales' number is demos-to-close. The growth lead's number is CAC payback. When everyone knows their number, meetings stop being status updates and start being problem-solving sessions.
The outcome: KPIs let you kill failing experiments early. You know within two weeks whether something is working — not after you've burned the budget.
Step 5
Financial Model
Not a spreadsheet you update once a quarter to show the board. A living decision-making engine that shows you where you're headed, what happens if you pull different levers, and when you'll hit your targets.
What it is (and isn't)
It isn't a fundraising deck. It isn't wishful hockey sticks. It's a model built from your actual Revenue Formula, driven by your real KPIs, that projects the next 12–24 months based on what your business actually does — not what you hope it will do.
The weekly rhythm
Plug in real numbers every week. Compare actuals to projections. When the gap widens, you know immediately — while there's still time to act. Most founders find out they're off-plan 90 days too late. This system gets that down to 7.
The full-circle payoff
You model hiring decisions against real CAC and LTV. You model marketing spend against real conversion rates. You model pricing changes against real retention. Every decision gets pressure-tested by the model before you make it — not after.
The outcome: At this point, you're not guessing anymore. You're making decisions with evidence. And when something changes in the market, you can model the impact before the damage is done.
Why now
Every month you run on intuition is a month of compounding wrong decisions.
The founders who win the next 24 months aren't the ones who raise the most. They're the ones who know their numbers, test their assumptions, and spend every dollar with intent. LEVERS is how you get there — and the fellowship is how you make it permanent.