On building of All Trades
With the innovation of the org chart McCallum eased the tradeoff between scale and efficiency that many organizations face as they grow. This new ‘operating system’ for firms operates even more effectively in modern times by leveraging the internet, but the tradeoff between scale and efficiency has not gone away. Structures and processes that work... See more
Omar Shams • The AI Organization, part I - by Omar Shams - mutable.ai
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
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
Sometimes fuzzy needs require fuzzy solutions
It means a transition from a knowledge economy to an allocation economy. You won’t be judged on how much you know, but instead on how well you can allocate and manage the resources to get work done.
Dan Shipper • The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy
There’s a lot of emotional overheard that comes with building a company whose essence is hard to put into words.
sari azout • 2023 End of Year Letter
By casting a wide net, I learned that I have very little ability to predict how useful a call will be in advance. There is relevance, when work is closely related to something you’re working on, and usefulness, when work advances something you’re working on. Relevance is easier to predict, but it’s not a very good proxy for usefulness, which is a... See more
Cate Hall • How to Be More Agentic
As an extension of this “don’t hire until it hurts” philosophy, Foster notes that Zapier was very hesitant in the early days to bring on anyone with management experience (even though the founding trio themselves didn’t have any). “Our first people managers were just me, my co-founders, and early employees that we promoted into those roles. We were... See more
The Not So Cookie-Cutter Approach to Company Building — 8 Lessons from Zapier
Early stages require both execution and strategy, the doers and the managers. Find both.
To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool.
paulgraham.com • How to Do What You Love
Job titles are just the most visible ladder of them all. It’s interesting that pompous executive job titles were invented during the Victorian era. This is when we started the trend of calling a cleaner a hygiene technician. A bin man became a waste management and disposal technician. Later on, a call-center worker became a communications... See more
Anne-Laure Le Cunff • The tyranny of job titles: from vanity growth to personal growth
Generalists have shirked the the notion of a true job title to fit their work and have followed the thread of providing value and making an impact. No wonder there’s a group of talented professionals hiding in plain sight given how constricting the traditional job titles have become in affirming our professional worth.