On building of All Trades

First, we get distracted by the inclination to make the group as big as we can imagine. After all, the change is essential, the idea is a good one. It’s for everyone.

Except that’s a trap. Because a group that’s too large cannot be coherent or organized.

Or perhaps, we blink and settle for a group that’s too small. Change requires tension, and if our... See more

Small groups, well organized

On small groups, well organized. An old but new way of building our organizations.

The thing about smart people is that they tend to think that if they think really hard about something, they might figure it out, when the truth is, in strategy (and life in general), there is never one right answer.

Strategy requires making choices about a future that is not yet known. I’m one of those people that tends to over-intellectualize

Sari Azout • Both are true

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

Joe Procopio • Starting a Business Looks Drastically Different in 2024

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

“A tiny acorn grows into a magnificent oak tree, and it never goes: ‘I have to improve myself.’”

Discover, not improve

There’s lots of well-intentioned advice out there about the risks if a business takes off and there isn’t a solid foundation to stand on. But at the same time, it's no surprise that startup leaders see words like "optimizing headcount through capacity planning models" and file it away as unnecessary bureaucracy that’s more befitting of the “BigCo”... See more

How Talent Teams Can Better Weather Boom-and-Bust Cycles

Contrary to what most founders assume, having more resources doesn’t make things easier. Instead, it introduces the challenge of resource allocation — deciding where to invest time, money, and personnel for the best return. As your startup grows, and as you hire more employees, it means you’re going to have more mouths to feed and more people with... See more

Are You Prepared to Pay the Real Price of Startup Success?

“We are only leading when we are centered on making others better.”

Superhuman

It’s not that people don’t want to work. It’s that their jobs feel, for whatever reason, unsustainable: unsustainable for their mental and physical health, but also unsustainable for their family, and their longterm survival. Many people actually really like the work that they do, if they were, indeed, allocating the bulk of their time to doing... See more

Anne Helen Petersen • The Expanding Job

At oAT, we’re on a constant mission to rethink how we do what we do and why

“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