Realisations from being inside brands advising on tech & ops and collaborating with software vendors to solve problems that aren't easy to fix.

💰 One of the biggest problems inside ecommerce companies is that brands need to invest in tech people or even IT managers and think they can wing it by adding Shopify apps and keeping it simple.

The way companies are getting found out on tech, and their delivery capability indicates how little time and money is going into the tech teams. It is not uncommon for brands doing £10M to have no one looking after tech, not even on a fractional basis.

The Founder is going out and reviewing every tech decision and trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, the operation is building a Google Sheets empire and wondering why new people don't add anything to operational efficiency.

🏆 Quick wins don't last

You can make broad strokes early on, like implementing a warehouse system or outsourcing fulfilment to a 3PL. Still, areas like Product Operations and Customer Support need to be architected to suit the business needs. Because you implement Gorgias, your customer support issues don't disappear. Could you diagnose and fix the root cause of the issues?

🏴‍☠️ Software Vendors

Building a product-focused software company when you're first in a market makes a tonne of sense, but solutions are what win deals when it becomes more competitive. The Founders I speak to who are looking for ways to win a deal to deal are opening up the incremental gains that will win in this economic situation. It would be best if you were in a position to do the right deals to keep your momentum.

🙋‍♂️ Operators who leverage low code are rising through the ranks.

Operators who can leverage low code to automate their jobs away are worth 2-3X Operators who push spreadsheets around. I am seeing intelligent people in their 20's jumping on low code tools like Retool, Airtable and Superblocks and going from £25K entry-level roles to earning £60-£100K in 2-3 years. The bar to being a weapon on these tools is lower. Still, suppose you can play product manager, understand business requirements, and turn them into internal tools. You can earn a full-stack developer salary because you're delivering full-stack developer value.

✨ If Operators are gold dust, low-code operators are stardust.

CTOs who ignore low code or think they're too good for it will get fired when someone turns up and shows that the roadmap ops have been chasing could be delivered but not by their closed mindset.

👴🏻 Enterprise solutions are going to find the next 12 months tough

I've reviewed plenty of Enterprise tech trying to move down the market into the £5-£100M range or even thinks that is their sweet spot. Almost all of them don't realise my first point: that the brands they're selling to can't manage complex tech or deliver the projects.