A weekly industry memo for founders who refuse to build generic software. I’m sharing the frameworks, "Dark Arts," and product strategy we use at Jams to build high-fidelity products in the experience economy.
Two questions to scale your business
The Founder MemoA weekly tale from a founder Hey, I took a break from this newsletter to figure out how to keep going. I renamed it to "Founder Memo". The word "memo" is often used for businesses. It's like a "record" businesses use to communicate ideas, insights or visions to the rest of the organization. But memo actually comes from memorandum. To me, a memo is a reminder. Something I'm writing to myself. Or to others who might find useful. So I'm re-launching as Founder Memo. Every Sunday, I'm writing a long form reminder. Additionally, every day I'm sharing a small reminder in the form of a 2 minute video. Follow along where suits you best: If you know other founder who might benefit from these ideas, please share. Let's go with today's reminder. Two questions you should ask yourself to scale your businessI heard Brian Chesky on the Masters of Scale podcast last week and he got me thinking. Not only about the current state of AI and how AI is really changing us. But also about the future. Brian shared 2 questions every founder should be asking:
The second one is definitely more philosophical and probably way too personal. It's a great question to ask over and over again until you figure out an answer that actually works for you. But I think the two of them go together. Because everything is too uncertain. AI is shaking up every single industry on a daily basis. Yet at the same time, if you really think about it, Chat GPT didn't really change our lives. We keep doing the same things we were doing before it came out. Asking yourself what will be true in 20 years represent your core values and what you believe to be true about this world. Figure it out, embrace it, and laser focus on it. If you know what you believe will be true in 20 years, you'll figure out a way to build or scale a business around that, which is where the second question comes in. As a designer and agency owner, I've can't stop thinking about what I think will be true in the next 20 years. I genuinely believe that AI and tech won't really change design. No AI will be able to recreate the artistry of Steve Jobs, or the design obsession of Brian Chesky. An AI will do generic UI or graphic design. And generic software development. Yes, many people are and will keep creating niched web and mobile apps to solve really specific problems around groups of people. But we'll still need the input of the expert to give guidance to the AI. And above all, we'll still need cohesive product design across organizations to truly innovate. As Chesky points out in the episode I shared: a really tiny percentage of Fortune 500 businesses are lead by designers. CEOs, founders, board members and investors are usually everything but designers. As Chesky says that IRL will be incredibly true and more important than ever in the next 20 years (which I agree), I believe human-led cohesive design will be as well. No one will want to be tattooed, massaged or hosted by an AI based robot. But all of us will be moved around by a self-driving car. We need human-led cohesive design across both scenarios. What's gonna be true for you in 20 the next years? And the same way Steve Jobs used to ask everyone at Apple "why are you still here?"....why does your business deserve to exist? Happy Sunday, Juan Follow me to get the Daily Memo: And share this newsletter The Founder Memo goes out every Sunday. Join 1,000+ founders here. |
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A weekly industry memo for founders who refuse to build generic software. I’m sharing the frameworks, "Dark Arts," and product strategy we use at Jams to build high-fidelity products in the experience economy.
Hey, Juan here. If you made it here through my Founder Memo videos, thank you. This one's a bit more personal than the previous ones. I spent 4 nights in a remote area in northern Patagonia called Frey (Bariloche, Argentina). It was my most intense climbing experience. No phone signal. Lots of climbers and hikers from everywhere. Great sense of community. And an alpine paradise formed by a huge valley. All this creates a big sense of connection to the place. Here are 3 lessons from the trip...
Hey, Juan here. I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life building digital products. And I’m now convinced the biggest opportunities aren’t purely digital at all. Let’s dive in. 🧠 From the Lab The internet is getting weird. AI-generated articles are everywhere. Photos are fake. Sora and Meta are churning out AI videos. It’s a huge hall of mirrors. How do you know what’s real? Kevin Rose, relaunching the old social news site Digg, is obsessing over this. He calls it the “verification problem”....
Contrarian opinion: taking time off during a burnout is useless Last week I felt a huge burnout. Probably the biggest one in a year. And I was very close to letting go, shutting down the laptop and going on holidays. Luckily I didn't. Most people tend to need "breaks" every once in a while. Weekends completely off the grid. 1 or 2 week trips. An entire month off per year. At the same time, most people on the day to day tend to say out loud: "I just need a break". Or "I can't wait for the...