Today's Tea Leaves (October)

- transfigurations bubbling up from the zeitgeist -

Keeping your burn rate low

Smaller teams with dedication to an audience can make meaningful businesses if they show commitment to a market and that means staying in the game.

Slow burning startups like Notion and Super Human are taking shape more can be done with less.

Previously your career was about working your way up a ladder. That ladder was relatively steady, so it was about inching forward.

Now your career is now about having endurance through the volatility.

It's about seeing the gap in the defense and shooting it when the opportunity is right. And it's about being conservative in the interim.

Look up Ergodicity.

Low Code and Micro SAAS Growth

We're seeing a 10x reduction in cost and a 10x of speed to market for building MVP's and company infrastructure. I'm seeing this first hand as I'm doing work with Makerpad who's leading the way here.

Every company is going to be having internal conversations about automation and process efficiency.

And SAAS has fundamentally changed business infrastructure for everyone.

Two weeks ago I spoke with the Lambda School and was walked through their internal company infrastructure. The business has 150 employees and until recently, no developers.

The whole business is built on low code tools like Webflow and Airtable.

Last week I spoke with an Agency who dropped custom development for Webflow and spent the last 6 months shifting their customers over.

The business owner told me:

"Now it's all about Impact, Speed, Robustness, and Flare (Good Design). I turned a product around in 2 weeks for a customer, previously would have taken 2+ months"


"Living Websites" and "Multi-Player Mode:"

I've written in the past about "living websites" – the idea that the web went from static sites, to interactive sites (interacting with the brand), to "living" where you can interact with the brand and other customers.

Figma is eating the design world.

Figma is a browser (cloud) based design tool for mockups and prototypes. (ate Photoshop).

Figma launched in-document commenting for teams. (ate Invision)

Figma launched "Figma Community" which is like Dribbble except the designs you upload are open source (Ate Dribbble).

And now Figma has "Multi-Player Mode" which is essentially live, collaborative editing of design documents.

Collaborative creation is the future of social media, and creator tools.

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Personally...

• I just got back from the Blockstack conference in SF. Next month I'll be at the No Code Conference.
• My Talk at the Authors Who Lead Summit is available now free.
• I’m no longer using AirPods. They wore out and I don't want to get the second set.
• Ryan Hoover's new project "Stacks" is some of my favorite marketing I'm seeing right now. I'm really loving how he's approaching storytelling about this product and I think everyone has the opportunity to do something similar.
• SMS is slowly creeping into more comms with who I'm working with. I want to work with people I can text. There’s trust in texting because it means you share an imagined space together that is a sandbox to fill in. Texting feels like it's about on ongoing relationship.
  
  xx David