The Right To Win
On practice, positioning, and choosing where to compete
read time 2.5 minutes
Last year, I spent a lot of time thinking about creating content. Film, photography, visual storytelling - all the things I used to do as a kid. I told myself I’d get back to it because I was ‘gifted’ and ‘had done it before.’
Then I actually started this year. New year’s resolution: post daily - one piece of writing, one visual. An uncomfortable realization hit fast.
Writing felt natural. I’d been practicing that through product work, writing on LinkedIn, and this newsletter. But the visual side? The world had moved on. Tools changed, platforms evolved, and my references felt dated. I knew how things had evolved as a consumer, but for a long time, I didn’t play the creator role.
I didn’t have the right to win in that space anymore - even though a younger version of me absolutely did. That 9th grader making videos was probably creating some of the best content for his age. But I’d stopped practicing, and those skills didn’t wait around for me to come back.
Potential expired.
What I did have was writing. I’d been practicing storytelling the whole time, just in different forms. Through product work. Through explaining complex systems. And eventually, through LinkedIn.
I started writing on LinkedIn about a year into my PM journey. Expanded to Substack a couple years after that. I was inconsistent at times, but I kept showing up. I was practicing publicly without even realizing it. Looking back now, I can see the breadcrumbs. And today, I have something I didn't have in film or photography anymore.
I call it the right to win.
What it actually means
The right to win is the strategic convergence of experience, consistent practice, and positioning. Not pure talent or passion - just sustained practice in a strategically chosen space.
I have it as a PM voice on LinkedIn and Product Rookies because I’ve worked at scale (Walmart, Adobe), practiced publicly for years, and positioned myself at the intersection of PM, storytelling, and AI. Those things compound.
I don’t have it as a filmmaker because I stopped that practice. But I’m rebuilding it now.
How companies think about it
When Google launched UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) - a way for agentic shopping to connect directly to retailer inventory and supply chain - a lot of people panicked about the future of retail. ‘What if all shopping becomes Google Shopping?’
Seeing the news, I didn’t panic about Walmart - they still had the right to win. Google could handle discovery and checkout, but atoms still need to move. Walmart’s supply chain infrastructure, built over decades of practice, doesn’t disappear because software gets smarter. That practice was the moat.
Harvey AI has the right to win in legal AI because they’ve been building exclusively in that vertical, understanding the workflows, earning trust with law firms. That focus and repetition creates advantage.
The right to win shows up when experience, practice, and timing converge - not because you planned it perfectly, but because you stayed in the arena long enough for the pieces to align.
The strategic question(s)
So where do you have the right to win?
Not where you’re interested. Not where you have potential. Where have you actually been practicing? Where does your experience create leverage? Where are you positioned in a way that’s hard to replicate? And just as importantly: where do you want to win?
This is about choosing where to compete and doing the work to make that choice matter.
Potential doesn't give you the right to win, practice does.
— Akash