In sales, computing, and likely a dozen other disciplines, there are two commonly accepted types of scale:
- Vertical, which means making a single thing do more
- Horizontal, which means using more things to do more
A simple example for a rideshare business owner is: do you buy a school bus or more cars to move more people, and nearly as important, does your business earn 10x on a Sapphire Reserve?
In manufactured spend, scaling is possible in both ways:
- Vertical MS: Open more cards, visit more grocery stores, run bigger charges
- Horizontal MS: Using more accounts, usually with more players
There’s a third type of scale for manufactured spenders too, which is often a great way to make fintechs go further, and that’s what we’re going to call diagonal scale because reasons. Examples of diagonal scale:
- Multiple players, each with multiple phones
- Multiple players, each with 99 employee cards
- Multiple players, each with multiple virtual assistants
- Multiple players, each with multiple FinTech accounts
- Multiple players, each of whom calls the CEO simultaneously, collectively known as a basket of Jimmys
For scale, always go diagonal, and remember, a bunch of diagonals = a plaid, and a plaid = a FinTech (we’ve gone full circle friends; now, we just need another square geometry joke or two. Oh wait, we definitely don’t need that.)
Manufactured spenders going plaid.