I lost my job to Squarespace. Not because it was hugely better than what I was doing (though, in honesty, it probably was), but because it was more than good enough. It taught me a lot about how value is created in a business.

The biggest insight a business can have is what makes them unique. This is their "Core Domain" or what "makes their beer taste better", their "moat", their "differentiator", their "power". Everything else flows from there.

Most importantly, whatever this is, it's the area where if you do it better, your business gets differentially better. An extra 10% in this area will always flow through to increased margins on the bottom line. These are things that you want to optimise - any improvement results in a better outcome.

But! Your business is not better because your privacy policy is better than your competitors. It's important that you have one, and that it does the job it needs to do. But an extra 10 hours making a better privacy policy will not net you more clients.

In this case, you need a solution that satisfices. If it's good enough, it's good enough. The standard might be high, but once you've cleared it, it's done, and you can move on.

The Squarespace moment

In my early work, I did a lot of business-card websites for companies. Simple model - go in, build the website, host it, and manage it month on month. Most businesses needed a website, and market rates were $5-10k for a basic build and some hundreds per month to host and maintain.

But for most businesses, a good enough website is good enough. They need an online presence, they need to rank well enough on their primary search terms, and they need contact & location information that is up to date. They need a satisficing solution. So that was my business - not the best in the world, but definitely good enough.

And that’s why I lost my job to Squarespace. Suddenly a satisficing solution was available without requiring a contractor. And it was <$100/month.

I saw the writing on the wall. I recommended to my clients that we migrate their sites to Squarespace, moved them, got them up to speed, and handed it over. I started my move into data science and AI research.

For the businesses, it was an easy choice - they could tick their business requirements for less than a tenth the cost. And it was probably better, but that wasn't even the issue. It was all good enough.

Now all business card websites look the same. The variation is gone. All the sites now are better than what I would have built, but there's way less character. But the entry cost of having a strong online presence is $19 / month, not $5-10k. This means more businesses with smaller capital outlay can get up and running.

And that's a better outcome. The $5k is far better spent on tools, or longer runway, or whatever will make the business truly better. Customers have higher quality websites even if they are a bit same same. I moved into more interesting, higher-value work.

The decision today

A founder setting up a new firm today gets to make some decisions. Privacy policies need to be written, taxes need to be done, websites need to be made. Most of this is necessary, and there must be a solution, but it only needs to be satisficing. With a detailed look, very little of it truly is work where the better the quality of the output, the better the value proposition of the business becomes.

And that’s at the heart of how I’m running my own business. I write these blog posts, but Claude keeps my writing tight, keeps consistent branding, and helps me promote them.

My thinking differentiates my work. The presentation has to be good enough to be accepted by the audience. And that’s my thesis for Vantg - lean strongly into the differentiated core, and aggressively use AI for the rest.

I lost my job to Squarespace. I’m not losing my job to Claude.