Britt Gage
@brittfgage
Founder, of All Trades. Building a new type of company for generalists and the founders we seek to serve.
Britt Gage
weofalltrades.com
Every day, we make decisions. These require effort, and there’s probably a finite amount of energy available for these focused choices.
That’s why our digital habits matter. Not to save us five or ten minutes a day, but to save us from a few hundred unimportant decisions that break our flow.
For example, if instead of trying to come up with a unique... See more
That’s why our digital habits matter. Not to save us five or ten minutes a day, but to save us from a few hundred unimportant decisions that break our flow.
For example, if instead of trying to come up with a unique... See more
Digital shortcuts and cognitive load
It’s hard to get a company to do a new thing, and the bigger the organization, the harder it is to change. Companies that are trying to change tend to require an equal and opposite force to overcome the inertia. Large enterprise sales teams are built around signing a single customer, while on the small business end of the market all you need is a few quick calls around an otherwise self-serve solution. When an executive wants their company to change, they often hire expensive, high-status consultants like McKinsey to make a plan that gets everyone on board.
If organizational inertia is one form of resistance that you might want to overcome, what are the business equivalents of simple machines that create mechanical advantage and multiply your input force into a much larger output force? And if they exist, do they have an equivalent trade-off of physical machines where you have to apply the force over a longer distance to gain leverage?
Maybe! Startups often hyper-focus on a small number of customers that share specific traits. This compresses all of the startup’s energy and force into a small space. It’s the opposite of being “spread thin.” The advantage of this approach is that you’re more likely to solve a problem, overcome inertia, and gain adoption by the customers you focus on. The trade-off is that it might be questionable how many more customers you’ll be able to find. I call this a market wedge, where you sacrifice scale for power.
In this world, there is an abundance of products, and every industry becomes far more competitive.
How can a startup survive in this environment? The answer is deceptively simple: Have good taste.
How can a startup survive in this environment? The answer is deceptively simple: Have good taste.
Evan Armstrong • The Art of Scaling Taste
But I will say, the thing I try to ask people to do is really take some time to introspect and just ask yourself, do you actually want to be here? If you could magically wave a magic wand and you were to start a new company right now, would it be this one? If it's not, there's no indentured servitude anymore. It's okay. It's okay to move on. And... See more
Reflections on a movement | Eric Ries (creator of the Lean Startup methodology)
Hindsight is 2020
I don’t mean “hindsight is 20/20.” I’m talking about the year 2020.
See, early in 2023, I wrote an article about starting and growing a business in 2023, and in that article I referenced this very same seismic shift in startup dynamics — a shift that, no surprise, began all the way back with the pandemic in 2020.
That’s the tricky... See more
I don’t mean “hindsight is 20/20.” I’m talking about the year 2020.
See, early in 2023, I wrote an article about starting and growing a business in 2023, and in that article I referenced this very same seismic shift in startup dynamics — a shift that, no surprise, began all the way back with the pandemic in 2020.
That’s the tricky... See more
Joe Procopio • Starting a Business Looks Drastically Different in 2024
On building of All Trades and Startup Advice
How startups changed since 2020:
-Consumer fell out of love with technology
-Business & Venture OverIndexed on AI
-Money went from Tight to Scared
What’s happening now:
-self founded, funded & reliant
-Profitable out of the gate
-solving problems and building with slower burn rate
-Innovating strategically alongside technical innovation
How do generalists help? Taking a broad approach gets you further faster
Every. Single. One. of the startups that I've worked with have some
co-founder (or early team) dynamic that implicitly shapes their lasting culture.
These practices may be well-known and honored, or they may be hard-coded yet unspoken (like the pie in my story above). Either way, they are a part of the company’s DNA — its nature.
As an Ops Leader,... See more
co-founder (or early team) dynamic that implicitly shapes their lasting culture.
These practices may be well-known and honored, or they may be hard-coded yet unspoken (like the pie in my story above). Either way, they are a part of the company’s DNA — its nature.
As an Ops Leader,... See more
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez • Find the sacred pie
The argument that Ramp is in the best position of any B2B company to capitalize on AI comes in three stages, from general to Ramp-specific:
AI will drive extreme consolidation.
The companies that win will be in the sweet spot between owning workflows and building great products. Ramp is in the sweet spot.
Of all of the workflows to own, finance is... See more
AI will drive extreme consolidation.
The companies that win will be in the sweet spot between owning workflows and building great products. Ramp is in the sweet spot.
Of all of the workflows to own, finance is... See more