See the Whole Company Before You Bet the Company
W³ Cubed™ turns the hundreds of interconnected decisions required to start, finance, launch and grow a company into one coordinated execution system built around WHO does WHAT, WHEN. It shows you what has to happen, who owns it, what it depends on, which assumptions deserve to be challenged and when the evidence says proceed, modify, pause or stop.
This is not a Lite version, a trial or an abbreviated preview.
There is no paid W³ Cubed™ Pro publication waiting behind it. I am making the complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan available under a special introductory offer — currently FREE.
This substantial 8.5″ × 11″ landscape publication includes more than 200 pages, approximately 44,000 words, 204 prioritized Action Items, 50 Milestones, nine coordinated Action Plans, Gantt charts and four Go/No-Go decision gates.
Robert Lee Goodman, MBA • 49X Founder/CEO • Raised Capital 44 Times • $120.1 Million (in Today’s Dollars) From 1,342 Investors • Mentored Thousands of Startup Company CEOs in 49 States and More Than 70 Countries Over 4.5 Decades
Before You Spend Another Dollar Starting Your Company…
Discover the decisions, dependencies, cash requirements and implementation responsibilities that could determine whether your startup succeeds or fails. The complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan is currently available FREE.
W³ Cubed™ Is About Making the Whole Startup Work Together
A startup is not built one department at a time. Product decisions change staffing. Staffing changes payroll. Payroll changes burn. Marketing changes customer volume. Customer volume changes support and operations. A delayed launch changes runway and often the amount of capital required. Fundraising readiness depends on nearly everything that happened before it.
W³ Cubed™ makes those connections visible before the founder discovers them by running out of time, money or options.
Start at the Real Point A
Available time, capital, experience, network, obligations, risk tolerance and the gaps that must be filled before the company can reach Point B.
Prove the Economics Early
Price, unit economics, startup costs, staffing, marketing, break-even, burn and runway enter the discussion before emotional attachment becomes expensive.
Replace Opinions With Evidence
Customers, competitors, objections, pricing and actual buying behavior progressively replace assumptions and enthusiasm.
Coordinate the Moving Parts
Product, people, operations, marketing, sales, finance and legal work are connected through one Global Priority system.
Know the Real Capital Need
Funding requirements are tied to timing, cash flow, staffing, product development, working capital and downside cases.
Earn the Right to Keep Spending
Four Go/No-Go Gates force deliberate decisions before another major block of time and money is committed.
WHO is accountable. WHAT specific result must be completed. WHEN does the work start and finish. Dependencies, evidence, Milestones and Go/No-Go Gates connect those decisions into one company-wide execution system.
I Used to Charge Clients Thousands of Dollars for Pieces of What I Am Giving You Here FREE
Comprehensive financial projections alone historically represented thousands of dollars of professional work. W³ Cubed™ goes much farther because it also captures the execution sequence, dependencies, people decisions, Milestones, assumption disciplines and lessons that sat underneath those engagements.
Action Items
Every major step in one Global-Priority execution sequence.
Milestones
Objective Definitions of Done so progress means more than staying busy.
Action Plans + Gantt Charts
Nine coordinated roadmaps covering the startup journey.
Go/No-Go Gates
Deliberate decisions about whether the company has earned the right to continue.
Field Notes
Patterns I have repeatedly watched founders get wrong over more than four decades.
Practical Founder Tools
WHO Chart™, assumption tests, cost checklists, Role Roster, weekly rhythm and more.
This Is the Complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan — Not a Teaser for a Paid W³ Cubed™ Publication
Nothing important is being held back for a “W³ Cubed™ Pro” edition. The complete Startup Action Plan is the publication currently offered FREE.
YES — SEND ME THE COMPLETE W³ CUBED™ STARTUP ACTION PLAN FREE
Nine Action Plans Organize the Journey — One Priority System Runs the Company
The Action Plans organize the work without pretending that financials, customers, product development, hiring, operations, marketing and fundraising happen one after another. They overlap, and W³ Cubed™ shows you how they connect.
Founder reality, customer problem and the assumptions that could undermine the company.
Revenue, costs, people, marketing, break-even, burn and the first Go/No-Go decision.
Competitors, real prospects, objections, buying criteria, demand and pricing evidence.
Integrated financials, downside cases, maximum cash deficit and the true funding requirement.
The business model, legal foundation, what gets built, who does the work and how the company operates.
Go-to-market, measured launch, KPIs, investor readiness, due diligence and fundraising execution.
Here Are Six of the 204 Questions W³ Cubed™ Forces You to Answer
The value is not simply having a checklist. It is seeing which questions arrive first, what each answer changes and which later decisions depend on it.
What kind of company can your actual life and resources support?
Which beliefs deserve evidence before you spend heavily against them?
Will the company live long enough to reach the point where the idea works?
What happens if reality refuses to follow the optimistic plan?
How do you know that the person you like is actually the right WHO?
Which contradiction or missing evidence is most likely to stop the financing?
Those Are 6 of 204.
If even one of those made you stop and think, imagine what may be hiding in the other 198.
This Is a Gift to the Startup Community
After more than four and a half decades of starting companies, raising capital, operating businesses and helping thousands of startup CEOs, I am semi-retired and increasingly focused on publishing and preserving what I have learned.
Over those decades, individual lessons accumulated into what I call Compound Knowledge™: the pattern recognition that comes from making decisions, living through their consequences and eventually seeing connections that are almost invisible when you encounter the problem for the first time.
I did not want that knowledge to disappear into old client files when I finally stopped consulting. So I began turning the tools, questions, financial disciplines, hiring methods and hard-earned lessons I used with paying clients into W³ Cubed™.
This Is the Real Version
I did not create a stripped-down lead magnet so I could force you to buy the “real” W³ Cubed™ later. This is the real version.
There are optional products and services around it. AI Arsenal™ can help you produce much of the work. My limited consulting practice can provide another experienced set of eyes when the stakes justify it.
But you do not have to buy either one to receive the complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan under the current free offer.
That is my gift to the startup community.
Avoid Cheap Talent — Even If That Talent Is You
Cheap Talent is not about hourly rates or geography. It is what happens when someone makes a high-consequence startup assumption without enough relevant experience to know whether that assumption is realistic.
Sometimes that person is a freelancer. Sometimes an employee or consultant. Sometimes AI. And sometimes it is the founder.
A Three-Month Delay Can Be Much Bigger Than Three Months
If a product launch slips three months, the obvious effect is the date. Less obvious are three more months of payroll and overhead before revenue begins, delayed collections, a deeper cash trough, a later break-even point, changed hiring needs and potentially a larger financing requirement.
That is a micro-decision with macro consequences. The W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan shows you how to look for those dependencies before they become expensive surprises.
The Opposite of Cheap Talent Is Not Expensive Talent
It is relevant Compound Knowledge™: accumulated experience that helps someone recognize the second-, third- and later-order consequences of a decision before everybody else discovers them by living through the mistake.
The complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan shows you where that kind of experience matters most and where unchecked assumptions deserve another set of eyes.
What Other “Small” Decisions Are Quietly Connected to Your Cash, Schedule and Funding?
That is exactly the kind of question the complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan is designed to expose.
The WHO Chart™: How Do You Know You Have the Right Person?
W³ = WHO + WHAT + WHEN, but putting somebody’s name in the WHO column is not enough. The person actually has to fit the seat.
One of the practical tools inside W³ Cubed™ is the WHO Chart™, adapted from a methodology I used in my own companies for positions ranging from receptionist through subsidiary president.
Credentials
What education, availability, compensation fit and other practical requirements genuinely matter for this seat?
Experience
What should this person already have done so that your company is not paying them to learn every critical lesson for the first time?
Capabilities
Which observable skills and behaviors matter most in your company, your culture and this particular role?
Candidates can even score themselves against the ideal before you compare their view with the hiring team’s. The method works for employees, cofounders, 1099 contractors, consultants and freelancers — especially anyone who touches your driving assumptions.
Before you trust the number, think about the person behind the number.
The WHO Chart™ Is Only One of the Practical Systems Inside the Complete Startup Action Plan.
Get the entire methodology first. Then, if you want the collaborative Team Chart, 90-day rescore and contractor tools, AI Arsenal™ Lite can take the system farther.
Four Times W³ Cubed™ Forces You to Stop Before You Spend More
Most startup plans are designed to keep moving. W³ Cubed™ deliberately creates four opportunities to decide whether new evidence still supports the company you thought you were building.
Do the quick economics make enough sense to justify deeper work?
Do real customers strengthen the assumptions — or weaken them?
Do the detailed economics and capital requirement still justify the business?
What do actual market results say: scale, iterate, narrow, reprice or stop?
Stopping an uneconomic idea before it consumes another six months can be one of the most profitable decisions a founder ever makes.
First Get W³ Cubed™ FREE. Then Decide Whether You Want AI Help Producing the Work.
W³ Cubed™ tells you what has to be done, in what sequence and why it matters. You do not need to buy anything else to receive that complete methodology.
AI Arsenal™ Lite is a separate optional product containing 50 guided founder workflows designed to help produce many of the work products W³ Cubed™ calls for — financial analysis, pricing work, runway, go-to-market planning, Business Plan material, investor preparation, WHO Chart™ tools and more.
The first 100 AI Arsenal™ Lite downloads are FREE, downloads 101–200 are only $9.95, and the regular price thereafter is only $19.95. Visit the AI Arsenal™ Lite page for the currently available offer.
Nothing Is Being Withheld From W³ Cubed™ to Force This Purchase
AI Arsenal™ Lite adds production capability. It does not unlock a hidden part of W³ Cubed™.
Start with the complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan free. Once you know what the company needs, decide whether AI Arsenal™ would save you enough time and money to be useful.
Use AI for Production. Use Experienced Human Judgment Only Where the Stakes Justify It.
I still maintain a small consulting practice, but I do not want you paying me only $250 per hour to do work that W³ Cubed™ and AI can help you do yourself.
The time to consider experienced outside judgment is when an assumption controls a meaningful amount of cash, timing, hiring, capital or investor expectations and nobody currently involved has enough relevant Compound Knowledge™ to challenge it confidently.
Whether that experienced check-and-balance is me, a CFO, industry operator, attorney, accountant, investor or another qualified advisor matters less than the principle: do not let a high-impact assumption remain unchallenged simply because nobody on the team knows enough to recognize what may be missing.
If you eventually want my help, a Chief ImpleMentor™ Founder Retainer provides a ten-hour block usable over 12 months at only $2,500, subject to availability and a personally approved, signed Statement of Work. But that is optional. Start with the complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan free.
Prices and terms can change at any time without notice.
Before You Download
Is the W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan really free?
Yes, under the current introductory offer. No credit card, no trial and no obligation. The complete publication is currently available free.
Is this just a stripped-down version designed to sell me W³ Cubed™ Pro?
No. There is no paid W³ Cubed™ Pro publication. This is the complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan. AI Arsenal™ Lite and my consulting are separate optional tools and services, not locked portions of the publication.
Why are you giving something this substantial away?
I am semi-retired after more than four and a half decades of starting, financing, operating and helping build companies. I want the Compound Knowledge™ accumulated during those years to remain useful after my consulting career ends rather than disappear into old client files.
I already have a Business Plan. Why would I need this?
A Business Plan describes your company. W³ Cubed™ focuses on execution: what has to happen, who owns it, what it depends on, when it happens, what evidence proves progress and where you should stop and reconsider before spending more.
Do I need AI Arsenal™ Lite to use W³ Cubed™?
No. W³ Cubed™ stands on its own. AI Arsenal™ Lite is optional and is designed to help you produce many of the work products faster after W³ Cubed™ shows you what needs to be done.
Do I need to read the entire document before starting?
No. The W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan provides different paths for pre-launch founders, operating companies and established businesses launching new initiatives. Start from your real Point A and use the methodology as the work calls for it.
How will I receive my free publication?
Complete the signup form near the top of this page. You’ll be redirected to a personal thank-you page and sent an email containing the download link. Please use an email address you can access and check your spam or promotions folder if necessary. The optional updates checkbox does not affect your eligibility to receive the publication.
What Don’t You Know That You Don’t Know?
W³ Cubed™ contains 204 Action Items, 50 Milestones, nine Action Plans, four Go/No-Go Gates and more than four decades of Compound Knowledge™ organized to help you find the missing assumptions, people problems, sequencing mistakes, cash risks and dependencies before they become expensive.
You do not have to buy the methodology under the current free offer.
You just have to request your copy.
The complete W³ Cubed™ Startup Action Plan is currently available FREE. Use the signup form near the top of this page to receive your private download instructions by email.