Toward a "Local" Approach to Building a Business
mail.google.com
Toward a "Local" Approach to Building a Business
Google: what does it take to make it bigger? Set a lower threshold for what opportunities to pursue.
Substack • Shreyas Doshi on pre-mortems, the LNO framework, the three levels of product work, why most execution problems are strategy problems, and ROI vs. opportunity cost thinking
Nicolay Gerold added
...scarcity in the ability to actually develop each "local" user experience in a way that both aligns with the culture of the new market and holds true to the company’s core product beliefs and north star vision for the business.
Venture Desktop • Global Like Goldman
sari added
As anything scales too effectively – from restaurants and ad agencies to social networks and search engines – the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, we crave the artisanal coffee shop. There's the identity piece of it, where we want some degree of distinctiveness. But there's a practical side too: ... See more
Notes on scale + quality
Agalia Tan added
small is meaningful
One thing I do look back on fondly was how incredibly focused we were. Resources and time were so tight that you could feel the weight of all the things you weren’t working on. You had real conviction that the thing you were doing was the most important thing.
To pick a somewhat trivial example, at fireside chats with Mark (the predecessor to the co... See more
To pick a somewhat trivial example, at fireside chats with Mark (the predecessor to the co... See more
Andrew Bosworth • Focus
When I was in grad school, the unstated assumption in most of what we were taught was that the sole point of a business (or any institution, really) was to grow. To grow, grow, grow, to as large a scale as possible. To build an empire, take over the world. My classmates — tycoons in waiting — lapped it up. “Lifestyle businesses”? Nah! Those were fo... See more
umair haque • Why We Need to Build Human-Scale Organizations
sari added
one thing I saw growing up in South London in the 1980s as supermarkets deployed was that small food shops tended to disappear, and then re-appear in new incarnations, providing service, curation and selection that supermarkets themselves couldn't match, for people willing to search them out and of course pay the premium, and where there was the de... See more
ben-evans.com • Lists Are the New Search — Benedict Evans
Robin Good added
Revisited: one thing I saw growing up with the Internet as Google grew, was that small lists and directories tended to disappear, and then re-appear in new incarnations, providing service, curation and selection that Google itself couldn't match, for people willing to search them out and of course pay the premium, and where there was enough interest to support this. They didn't scale - they didn't turn into chains of 30 indie directories networks - but they often prospered.