Founder Manifest
We Built Strategy Wrong
For decades, we've accepted a fiction: that strategy lives in documents. That a beautiful deck, crafted once a year at an offsite, somehow translates itself into daily decisions. That execution tools tracking task completion equal strategic progress.

This is not strategy. This is theatre.
Strategy doesn't fail because it's wrong.
It fails because it loses contact with reality.
While we plan in slides, decisions happen at the front lines – based on fragmented information, outdated assumptions, and invisible dependencies. By the time the quarterly review reveals the drift, the capital is already burned.

In 2026, with expensive capital and zero tolerance for waste, we can no longer afford to fly blind between board meetings.
The Reality Gap
The distance between strategic intent and operational reality is where value dies. We've built entire categories around "execution excellence" – tools that help you complete tasks faster, track OKRs more efficiently, report progress more beautifully. They answer one question:
“Did we do what we planned?”
“Given what's happening right now, are we still doing the right things?”
The difference is everything.
Optimizing execution without strategic clarity means running faster in the wrong direction. You're not inefficient – you're effective at the wrong objectives.
What cosmos Is
cosmos™ is the strategic operating system that makes strategy steerable in real time.
Not a project management tool. Not an OKR tracker. Not another reporting layer.

cosmos™ is the infrastructure that connects business objectives, operational reality, and decision-making in a single, living context.

It transforms strategy from a planning artifact into a control system – one that shows you where decisions create impact and where they don't, continuously, as conditions change.
The Four Principles
Perspective
Every role sees exactly the strategic context relevant to their decisions. No more. No less. Target Lenses create focused views without losing the whole.
Alignment
Goals cascade fractally across the organization. What's strategic at the board level becomes operational at the team level – transparent, connected, consistent.
Real-Time
Strategy operates on current information, not month-old assumptions. Integrations bring internal and external data into strategic context immediately.
Clarity
Perspective, alignment, and real-time data condense into clear decision signals. You see where action is required and which moves advance the goal.
Why This Matters Now
The business environment has fundamentally changed.
The luxury of slow feedback loops is gone. Markets shift faster. Customer expectations evolve overnight. Competitive advantages compress. Technology disrupts continuously.
Organizations are drowning in three critical gaps:
1. The Velocity Gap
Business moves faster than planning cycles. By the time you review quarterly results, market conditions have already shifted twice. Waiting for the next board meeting to course-correct means bleeding resources on obsolete priorities.
2. The Coordination Gap
As organizations scale, alignment becomes exponentially harder. Teams work in parallel on conflicting priorities. Dependencies surface too late. Redundant work multiplies invisibly. The cost isn't just inefficiency – it's strategic drift at the worst possible moment.
3. The Capital Efficiency Gap
Every company, regardless of funding stage, faces pressure to do more with less. Resources are finite. Time is expensive. The question isn't just "Are we executing well?" but "Are we executing the right things?" – and most organizations discover the answer months too late.
For investors, this means:
  • Growth at all costs is dead. They fund operational discipline now.
  • They want burn multiples under control, predictable unit economics, and early warning systems
  • They want to see you can steer, not just execute
For companies, this means:
  • Leadership teams waste 30-50% of their time in alignment meetings that produce temporary clarity, not lasting structure
  • Middle management translates strategy into action through tribal knowledge and best guesses, not shared context
  • Teams work without understanding which priorities actually move the business – so they optimize locally while the company drifts strategically
Our internal benchmark shows that 50% of organizations operate with a Strategic Clarity Score below 30% – meaning most people can't articulate how their work connects to business outcomes.
That's not a culture problem. That's a systems problem.
In an era where competitive advantage compresses, margins matter, and agility determines survival, strategic clarity isn't a luxury. It's the operating system you need to compete.
What We Enable
cosmos™ answers the three questions every decision-maker asks repeatedly:
  1. Leadership teams waste 30-50% of their time in alignment meetings that produce temporary clarity, not lasting structure
  2. Middle management translates strategy into action through tribal knowledge and best guesses, not shared context
  3. Teams work without understanding which priorities actually move the business – so they optimize locally while the company drifts strategically
The Bottom Line
cosmos™ turns strategy from a planning artifact into a real-time control system.
This isn't incremental improvement. It's a category shift – from execution tracking (rearview mirror) to strategic steering (cockpit).
The result:
  • 30–50% less time wasted on alignment overhead
  • 20–60% faster decision cycles
  • 2–4 weeks earlier detection of strategic drift
  • 10–35% reduction in work that doesn't move strategic objectives
In practical terms: Stop burning capital on blind execution. Start steering with real-time clarity.
Who This Is For
Strategic Decision-Makers
(Board, C-Level)
You need shared situational awareness, early warning signals, and data-backed prioritization – not surprises in board decks.
Strategic Owners & Leaders
(BU Leads, Department Heads, Product/Ops Leads)
You need to translate company goals into manageable objectives, see dependencies before they block you, and steer continuously instead of reporting retrospectively.
Contributors & Specialists
(Teams, Experts, Project Owners)
You need to understand why your work matters, what's actually a priority, and how your contribution connects to the whole.
cosmos™ is your goal-orientation and decision framework.
Our Conviction
Strategy is not a document. It's the operating system of a company.
It must adapt while you operate. It must make dependencies visible before they become problems. It must close the gap between what you plan and what actually happens.

This is what we built cosmos™ to do.

Not because execution tools are bad – but because execution without strategic clarity is just expensive motion.

In a world where capital is expensive, markets move fast, and margins matter, clarity is no longer optional. It's the baseline for survival.
The End of Static Strategy
We believe the future belongs to organizations that can steer in real time – where strategy isn't locked in annual planning cycles but continuously aligned to reality.

Where clarity isn't a luxury but a discipline.

Where decisions are made with full context, not best guesses.

Where everyone works not just strategically, but in a strategic context. That future is what cosmos™ enables.
  • Strategic clarity in real time.
  • Measurable business impact.
  • Every day.
This is not a tool.
This is how strategy should work.
Flo Felter
Founder of cosmos™
Flo Felter, Founder and CEO of cosmos™
Appendix: What We're Not
We're not a project management tool
because we don't manage tasks.
We're not an OKR tracker
because we connect goals to reality.
We're not a BI dashboard
because we provide strategic context, not just data.
We're not a reporting tool
because we enable steering, not retrospection.
We're the Strategic Operating System that makes all of these things work together.