On building of All Trades

“The majority of companies don’t work in the way we do, which leads to fewer people with these kinds of skills. A conventional interview process, often modeled by large companies, doesn’t account for this. It’s challenging to assess in interviews if someone is truly a builder, has good taste and judgment, can take initiative, and approaches... See more

Generally, teams think about switching costs as the amount of time and money needed to install one solution and remove another. But true switching costs are much more than that: they include the politics, emotions, career ambitions, esoteric business processes, competing priorities, and sheer laziness that all favor the existing solution. Those... See more

I didn’t even announce the opening of the store until we opened—I declined the few press requests I received and didn’t really talk about it publicly. I can’t totally explain it, but I felt (feel?) protective of this little store like it was a person. It had to actually become something before I could say what it was. I wanted to let it cultivate... See more

I’m thinking about how the only way to get better at making things is to make things, and to let the thinking happen inside the work – where you can judge a thing based on how it feels – instead of outside the work.

I just work on myself and show up authentically every day. I really don’t view anything as competition. We’re all out here helping people. We’re all out here on the same mission. What I do is really just bringing my own authentic spin onto what I’m creating and putting out there.

It’s easy to be excited about what the company seems to do... to choose our path based on the public’s perception of the output. But once the company has more than one person in it, most of our day is about satisfying the customer, meeting supplier requirements and dancing with the tension of doing our jobs.

Often, we use the product we make as a... See more