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
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
Optimism matters. Ideas matter. But yelling “Be more optimistic!” while pointing furiously at the things happening at the top layer misses some important context that I think an appreciation for the other layers can help fill in.
Nothing is black and white. There are layers to this shit. The stronger our base, the faster we can accelerate.
We’re in... See more
Nothing is black and white. There are layers to this shit. The stronger our base, the faster we can accelerate.
We’re in... See more
Packy McCormick • Pace Yourself
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.
Plans embrace boundaries and reality, they don’t ignore them. Plans thrive on scarcity and constraints. Plans are open for inspection, and a successful planner looks forward to altering the plans to make them more likely to become real.
Dreams, plans and contradictions
More choices often lead to less action. Do more by doing less.
100 Simple Truths
From James Clear's 3-2-1 Email: The work required to be happy, and important lessons that aren't taught in school
... See moreMany people won't attempt something unless they can find an example of someone else who is already doing it. Rely on this type of thinking too much and you'll never do anything interesting.
Your path through life is unique. It is
There is even more to be afraid of. There is a fear that committing myself to the cause of greatness, to being all that I think I can be, will turn me into something I now dislike. Because greatness is so malleable, I worry that “being great” eventually destroys who I am.
In the world of content, the pursuit of greatness manifests as those folks who prostitute themselves to traffic, who helplessly careen from trend to trend, desperate in their desire for virality. In startups, the same can be said of those who shift from Web3 to AI to bootstrapping to whatever will be trendy in a month.
Greatness is not measurable. It is not quantifiable. I’m not even sure it is definable. But still we desire it. Be aware, it is a devourer resting within us. What we choose to feed it determines what kind of great we will be.
It’s important to consider both your body and your mind when it comes to rest. “Our minds and our bodies are connected, not just through physiology, but also through ways of communicating,” Conlon says. “I think that is so important for people to wrap their heads around and try to really accept: You can't really take care of one without taking care... See more