One more note about staying in your lane, building off of last week’s letter.
Recent technological developments have largely occurred because of the growth imperative. We had a big success, then another big success, then a little success, and along the way a bunch of other successes that have rewritten the way that society works now. Then we ran out of ideas for a bit, and so what fills the void? Moreover, what happens when the answer to that question is forced onto customers who don’t actually want it, and are asking for something else?
There will, of course, be a quieter rebellion against that form of technology, and it will come faster than you think. People try to do stuff they like. People seek ease & convenience. And they’re smarter than you think.
I’ve been journaling about what to do with the format of this list. If you’ve been around for a while, you know that there used to be considerably more structure to the thing: links, maybe a brief update, some things about Draft. It is now considerably more free-form, and after some reflection I think that’s probably the way forward.
On the one hand, I admire newsletters that do the same thing every week, lockstep. HeyDesigner is just links. UX Collective is links with their own editorial, in a structure that is consistent week to week.
I don’t think that makes sense for us, because 1) it’s less fun to write, and 2) far more importantly we exist in a bit of a more fluid time in the industry. Towards that end I like the idea of just pulling a chair up and talking. After all, if you’re willing to read it, then you’re probably more willing to vibe with the rest of my work. Feels like alignment!
We now turn, mortifyingly, to the requisite chinscratching about marketing, which thank you for your patience, etc.
The first wave of our repositioning was about elimination. Where are we incorrectly discussing our previous market, and what can we rapidly rewrite it to? The next wave has begun, which is about creation. Who is our new market, and how will we speak to them?
Towards that end, we have restructured & rewritten the marketing page for our flagship offering, Draft Revise. 12 years ago, people pored over the tea leaves of this page, holding it up as an example for other value-based consultants. So I probably put a lot of pressure on myself to make Draft into a good steward of the page, even though it looks unrecognizable to the aforelinked.
That’s because the world has changed, and so has Draft. We have little to prove now, having generated billions in annual recurring revenue for our total client portfolio. The marketing page there used to be quite short: describe the thing, offer an application, get out of the buyer’s way. The rewrite doubled the page’s length, adding a testimonial and stronger positioning.
We also added a point of view. What do people tend to mess up when it comes to design for independent software? What do we see in a more systematic sense? This is a different way of talking about pedigree. In addition to showing the numbers, we can now talk about the thinking a little.
Someday we might get big enough that we can get away with literally posting a blank page while running a team of 30 that slowly changes human consciousness for an entire country. That day is not here, probably since Draft is run by a thirsty trash panda who just wants to vibe with plants while blathering into a Slack window. Your marketing page is a reflection of who you are, no?