Lyrics

All my startup founders, follow your hunches
Your passions and hungers, your appetite for disruption
At business lunches, discussions, testing industry functions
Just don’t forget to check your Strategy Compass

Cause a pioneer without a compass is lost, technically
Which competitors are we up against? What’s our identity?
Who’s the target customer? And what tech do we need?
Check the compass, figure the direction and proceed

Check the compass, figure the direction and ask yourself
Are you takin’ the field, to attack and storm a hill?
Or do you sit back and dig a moat and just chill?
Are you jackrabbit skilled, or packin’ a tortoise shell?

Are you building a coalition or straight competing for deals?
Collaborate or compete, storm a castle or fortress-build
That’s the compass, baby, North, South, East, West
Four strategies, so let’s see which is best

Intellectual Property is where you sit back and collaborate
Stay safe within the castle and add to the value chain
Within an existing market, and deliver for incumbents
An Idea Factory – that’s how Getty Images functions

Architectural is building a moat, but still competing
A strategy that’s got Google and OpenTable succeeding
With reservations for seating, a brand new platform
That industry-transforms like the Apple App Store

Or, like Facebook, serving an urgent need
That people never knew they had while controlling the IP
And identity, to get up in everyone’s headspace
But architectural plays can also go the way of the Segway

That’s a segue to Disruption, storm a hill and compete
Keep a low profile at first, don’t provoke the beast
Stay low and build exclusive cred, like Clubhouse
And then, when it’s too late to defend, you just bust out

With moxie and verve like a swaggering hip-hop hustler
Trust me, you wanna be Netflix not BlockBuster
Havin’ a last stand like Custer, Rest in Peace to incumbents
That failed to fend off attacks from Disruptors

But wait, you can storm a hill and collaborate
That’s the slow path to riches, that’s the Value Chain
The domain of quiet achievers, some would say the safe path
The pedestrian way to make cash, data cache

Straight facts, like me kickin’ MBA raps
I’m adding lyical value, but y’all paid for this class
That’s one way to blaze a path, value chain raps
I guess that makes me the lyrical version of SafeGraph

So what is SafeGraph?! They got the data popping
They’re tracking you every time you go and pay for a coffee
They started as a competitive play, then got a conscience
Moving toward collaboration, ask Abdul Wahab Muhammed

I got it, if I’m SafeGraph embodied, you can thank me
It’s an architectural play, just ask Sneha Solanki
I take every statement that you proclaim, or mutter
Or stutter, and refine it into lyrical butter

And that’s collaborative, it’s bigger than proprietary ad tech
Berkeley is not gonna use my rap to sell classes
Cause that would be controlling instead of open
Usable data in a Value Chain, proclaims Rose Wen

Plug and play baby, with out the negative connotations
Arjun Ajjampur raised, like they’re gonna scrape it
So why not have it be like a data scrapyard
Said Arjun, chillin’ in his picturesque backyard

But whoah, some customer’s want the data rough – they waited enough’
Forget the refinement, just give me the basic stuff
Shashank Balashankar wants to Rename it ‘Data is Us’”
Customer’s want it quick, just ask Isaiah Deresa

But how are we gonna work it? And connect the circuit?
Sellside Research, said Matthew Hurwit
Sell it to investors like Bloomberg News
You gotta give the customer what they want, says Lu Xu

Just like this lyrical groove, just ask Lauren Q
Execution and collaboration is how we do
But Jonathan’s pushin’ back when the data’s mis-used
No data’s gonna prove the existence of “Q”

Anon, but what about government con-tracts, that’s not hard
Less profit, says Balaji Bhaskar
Whoah, says Chelsea, Balaji’s point blows
The government’s got mad cheese, as Chelsea Boyle knows

The Department of Transportation overstands
That’s when control intent pays off, ask Ocean Van
And Jonathan Wolf is just sitting back, lovin’ it
We’re just about to hire a head of Federal Government

We’re a generalized data company with specific refinements
All things to all people, universal alignment
And this class is killin’ it, BigUp Berkeley College
Except when you said we have no domain specific knowledge?!

Whoah, don’t get it twisted, it’s not called Safe Groove
It’s SafeGraph, we sell the butter and the cake too
We serve the data every second of every minute
Tellin’ Denver where to set up a vaccination clinic

So yo, park that data in your five car garage
Cause the profit prospects of most companies are mirage
Either bottle up or take the armor off, profit-loss
Analyzed by the students of Abhishek Nagaraj

According to the compass, companies are profiting
Shout out to Erin Scott and Scott Stern for their co-authorship
And Josh Gans, for takin’ a startup chart and choppin’ it
Up into four highly-demarcated quadrants

So you can break it down, like the plot of an action movie
Architectural plays baby, just ask Alex Luzi
With infinite potential that leaves everyone impressed
Dan Berstein is fully ready to invest

That’s how tech works, across all sectors
Jonathan, how do you stay horizontal experts
And still keep your company culture, tell me how will it end?
Can you keep that ethos of open data, like Philip Chen

Jonathan was like, don’t worry, we keep it strong
By giving bathroom data, to any peeping Tom
I’m just kidding they’re not, they have high principles
That’s why their investors get the interest plus the principle

This class was dope, Abhishek you can test me
See how much curriculum you can from a week
Plus Abhishek, the curriculum’s deep
When you describe the insurance industry as “sexy”

Compared to the public sector beat
Check the technique, analytics extreme
Compare this rap to 8-Mile, it might take a while
It’s like refining a 8 million line data file

So all my startup founders, follow your hunches
Your passions and hungers, your appetite for disruption
At business lunches, discussions, testing industry functions
Just don’t forget to check your freaking Strategy Compass

Cause a pioneer without a compass is lost, technically
Which competitors are we up against? And what’s our identity?
And who’s the target customer? And what tech do we need?
Check the compass, figure the direction and proceed

Check the compass, figure the direction and proceed

Check the compass, figure the direction and proceed