Anggriawan Sugianto

There is a specific kind of silence that only exists at 3:00 AM on a muddy trail in the middle of a race. Your headlamp is failing, your quads feel like they've been tenderized by a mallet, and your brain is screaming—rationally, logically—that you should stop.

Over the years, I've realized that the "algorithms" I learned in ITB and the "frameworks" I mastered in KAIST MBA are exactly what keep me moving on the trail. And conversely, the "grit" of the trail is what allows me to lead Suitmedia through the volatility of the Indonesian tech landscape.

Success is isomorphic. The same principles that scale a company win a mountain race. These are the mental models I live by, grouped into the pillars that define my world.

BTS Ultra 2025

I. The Personal Operating System: How I Think

These are the foundational models for clarity. If my internal "Map" is wrong, no amount of speed will get me to the right destination.

1. The Logic of Truth

Before you can solve a problem, you have to see it clearly.

• First Principles Thinking: Strip a problem to the core truths. Don't reason by analogy; build your own logic from the ground up.
• Occam's Razor: When faced with two competing theories, the simplest one is usually the truth. Avoid over-engineering your life.
• Map vs. Territory: Your mental models, plans, and spreadsheets are just "maps." Never confuse the abstraction with the messy reality of the "territory."
• Circle of Competence: Be brutally honest about what you know and where your expertise ends. Play only in games where you have an edge.

2. Strategic Decision Making

Choosing the path when the fog of war (or mountain mist) is thick.

• Inversion: Instead of asking how to succeed, ask "How could I spectacularly fail?" Then, build systems to avoid those specific pitfalls.
• Probabilistic Thinking: Life is a game of odds, not certainties. Focus on making high-probability bets rather than chasing sure things.
• Regret Minimization: When at a crossroads, choose the path that your 80-year-old self would be most proud of.
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: Having the courage to walk away from a bad project or relationship, regardless of how much time or money you've already invested.

3. The Physics of Growth

How to ensure effort results in exponential progress.

• The Pareto Principle: Identify the 20% of inputs—habits, clients, or training—that produce 80% of your results. Ruthlessly cut the rest.
• Compounding: The most powerful force in the universe. Tiny, 1% gains repeated over a decade create exponential wealth, wisdom, and fitness.
• Velocity vs. Speed: Speed is how fast you move; Velocity is speed plus direction. It's better to crawl toward the right goal than sprint toward the wrong one.
• Theory of Constraints: Every system has one primary bottleneck. Improving anything else is an exercise in futility. Find the bottleneck; widen it.

4. Human & Social Dynamics

Navigating the "Human API" in leadership and life.

• Incentives: Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome. If you want to change behavior, change the reward structure.
• Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by neglect or a simple mistake. It saves a lot of unnecessary anger.
• Social Proof: We are biologically wired to mimic others. Use this awareness to choose mentors wisely and avoid groupthink traps.
• Pygmalion Effect: People generally live up to or down to the expectations we set for them. Lead with high belief in your team.

5. Systemic Resilience

Building a person in me that gets stronger under pressure.

• Antifragility: Designing your life so that you don't just survive the storm—you actually get stronger because of them.
• Feedback Loops: The shorter the gap between an action and its feedback, the faster you can iterate and improve.
• Margin of Safety: Always leave a buffer—in your schedule, your bank account, and your heart rate—for the unknown unknowns.
• The Power of Narrative: The stories we tell ourselves about our failures determine whether they become traumas or fuel for growth.

II. The Suitmedia Engine: How I Scale

An agency is a living organism of human talent. My goal: Scaling a creative digital consultancy toward high-margin recurring revenue.

1. The Economic Moat

How we stay ahead in a commodity-driven agency world.

• Value-Based Pricing: Charge for the impact, not the hours. Charge based on the financial impact or transformation you provide the client.
• Recurring vs. Transactional: Focus on farming (retainers) rather than hunting (one-off projects). Stability allows for long-term strategic scaling.
• The Flywheel Effect: Every successful project should feed the next. Case studies build social proof, which attracts talent, which improves delivery.
• Signaling: Your prestige, expertise, and thought leadership are signals of quality that lower the perceived risk for enterprise clients.

2. Operational Leverage

Maximizing "revenue-per-employee" through efficiency.

• High-Output Management: Your value as business leader is the multiplier you apply to your team. Focus on high-leverage activities like strategy and coaching.
• Automation: If a human has to do it thrice, an algorithm should do it forever. If a task is repetitive, it should be a script.
• Modular Design: Build once, reuse often. Build productized services. Use reusable frameworks so you aren't reinventing the wheel for every client.
• Opportunity Cost: Every "Yes" to a bad client is a "No" to a great one.

3. Strategic Filtering

Keeping the focus sharp and the margins high.

• 80/20 Portfolio: 20% of your clients likely provide 80% of your profit. Identify the "A-list" and move away from the high-maintenance "D-list."
• Jobs to be Done: Clients don't buy websites; they buy lead generation or brand authority. Clients don't buy apps; they buy efficiency or growth. Sell the "Job," not the tool.
• Circle of Competence: Say "No" to work that is outside your core expertise, even if it's lucrative. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Commodity work kills margins.
• Brand Positioning: In a crowded market, being "different" is more profitable than being "better." Find your unique intersection of technology, creative, and strategy.

4. Scalable Architecture

Building a firm that doesn't break as it grows.

• Technical Debt: Quick-and-dirty solutions aren't free; they are loans that must be paid back with high interest. Manage it or it will bankrupt you.
• The Lindy Effect: For mission-critical enterprise work, trust technologies that have already survived for decades (like PostgreSQL, Java/C, or Python/PHP).
• Compounding Knowledge: Document everything. An agency's only real asset is its "Collective IQ" stored in its processes and wikis.
• Occam's Razor: The most scalable technical architecture is usually the simplest one. Avoid shiny objects over-engineering.

5. Resilience & Alignment

Ensuring the team and the market move in harmony.

• Skin in the Game: Align team rewards with client success. Ensure that the people making the decisions are the ones who feel the consequences of those decisions.
• Second-Order Thinking: Before launching a new service, ask: "And then what?" How will this affect our overhead, culture, and focus in 18 months?
• Antifragility: Use market downturns to "clean house" and pivot toward the next wave (like AI) while competitors are paralyzed.
• The Principal-Agent Problem: Align the incentives of your employees with the goals of the firm to ensure they act like owners.

III. The Ultra-Trail Mindset: How I Endure

Trail running isn't about running; it's about problem-solving while your house is on fire.

1. The Engine (Bio-Economics)

Treating the body as a high-performance system.

• First Principles: Biochemistry. Ultra-running isn't a test of "will"; it's a test of managing glucose, sodium, and oxygen levels.
• Conservation of Energy: You have a finite "matchbook." Don't burn a match by sprinting a hill just because you feel good in the first hour.
• Feedback Loops: Relative Perceived Exertion (RPE). Learn to read your body's signals better than your GPS watch.
• Entropy: In a 20-hour race, things will fall apart. Expect disorder, and your job is to be the manager of chaos.

2. The Mind (Psychological War)

Winning the battle between the ears.

• Chunking: Your brain can't process "40km left." Tell it: "I'm just going to the next aid station."
• Radical Acceptance: If it's raining and you're shivering, accept it. Resistance is a waste of metabolic energy. The mud is just part of the deal.
• Reframing: Don't see a 1,000m climb as a burden. See it as a "filter" that allows you to pass runners who haven't trained for the incline.
• Regret Minimization: Remind yourself that the pain is temporary, but the memory of quitting is forever.

3. The Strategy (Tactics & Risk)

Executing the race with rigor.

• Velocity vs. Speed: Staying on the trail and moving at a steady 12 min/km is better than running 5 min/km in the wrong direction.
• Inversion: What will cause me to DNF? Blisters? Nausea? Solve those three things before you cross the start line.
• Expected Value: Don't risk a broken ankle on a technical descent to save 30 seconds. The expected value of a safe finish is higher.
• Redundancy: Two is one, and one is none. Carry two headlamps, extra batteries, and two ways to navigate.

4. The Prep (The Long Game)

Winning the race before you reach the start line.

• Compounding: Aerobic base. You can't cram for an ultra. It is the result of thousands of boring, easy kilometers compounding into mitochondrial density.
• Systems vs. Goals: The race finish is the goal. The training schedule and the nutrition plan are the system. Focus 100% on the system.
• The Lindy Effect: Never wear new shoes or eat new food on race day. Trust only what has already survived your longest training runs.
• Margin of Safety: Carry 500 more calories than you think you need. The mountain always takes longer than the map suggests.

5. Domain Limits

Knowing when to push and when to pivot.

• Circle of Competence: Be honest about your skill on technical terrain. Trying to fake it on a ridge line is a recipe for disaster.
• Theory of Constraints: If your stomach is shut down, your legs don't matter. Solve the gut first.

The Universal Big 8

If I'm ever overwhelmed, I strip everything back to these eight universal truths. 

1. The Theory of Constraints: Where is the bottleneck right now? Is it my team's capacity, or is it my own inability to digest calories? Fix that first.
2. First Principles Thinking: Forget what the industry or the other runners are doing. What are the physics of this situation?
3. Compounding: Don't look for the hack. Just do the boring, consistent work. Every day.
4. Antifragility: How can I make this crisis (or this storm) my competitive advantage?
5. Velocity vs. Speed: Am I moving fast in the right direction? Or am I just busy being busy?
6. Inversion: Instead of trying to be brilliant, how can I just avoid being stupid? (Usually by avoiding DNFs and bad clients).
7. The Pareto Principle: What is the 20% of effort that will get me 80% of the way to the finish line?
8. Feedback Loops: Shut up and listen to the data—whether it's the P&L statement or my resting heart rate.

Final Reflection

Life, much like a 100km ultra, is a management of decay. Your legs will tire, the market will shift, and your energy will wane. But with a solid set of mental models, you don't just endure—you evolve.

I've fallen for the sunk cost fallacy more times than I'd like to admit—clinging to a project or a pace that was clearly doomed. But these models aren't about being perfect; they are about having a "source code" to debug yourself when things go wrong. Keep moving forward!