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It may not be the most common pairing, but there are lots of people who prefer the polish of Apple's computers and the flexibility of Android phones. The trouble comes when trying to get these two otherwise awesome platforms to play nice together

If there were a particular area of tech most similar to USHG, it’d be the rise in startups focusing on retention and increasing share of customer wallet. As customers become more cognizant of their options and switching costs go down, companies that provide the best service are able to better compete for customers and then absorb more of their spend.

As the cost of forming startups decreases and capital availability increases we see a proliferation of options for consumers in any given category. This market supply fragmentation provides users with more options–and shifts leverage in the market towards demand.

The world is becoming increasingly demand driven. Consumers have more and better choices. And have become far more informed and educated about their options too.

By having all these avenues to accommodate the career growth of its employees, groups like USHG and Back of the House have lower employee churn. This allows them to invest more in training their employees because they know they will be able to reap the benefits of their investment over a longer period of time. Long term, the amount invested in employees is dictated by the return captured by the company — similar to LTV/CAC and payback periods in the realm of user acquisition. These restaurant groups have found a better way to extend theirs.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it *wasn’t* possible to do a similar strategy before. I think there are many trends that point to why we will increasingly see more restaurant groups converge on this approach. There are macro tailwinds that USHG rode. And they are identical to many of the tailwinds hitting tech as well.

Finally as a note. Danny Meyer and the Union Square Hospitality Group are a good example of how we often discuss the first order cause of things, without understanding the structural systems shaping them. People reading Setting the Table often talk about being more customer focused. But they don’t understand that it’s not about trying harder. It’s about setting up a their business model to align with prioritizing customer service. And identifying spaces where that can happen.

The reason that Rails and Django have been so broadly adopted isn’t because it made writing web apps so much easier for people who were already writing them, it’s because they opened the door for so many new people to add writing web apps to their arsenal of skills. Users are attracted to frameworks that enable a wide swath of new technology at once. This is how frameworks gain wide adoption.

While the Architect framework and the Begin applications themselves are written in a modular, extendable way that will make adopting other clouds an option in the future, the fact remains that as of 2018, only AWS has the combined capabilities necessary to currently deploy performance intensive complex serverless applications.

If I had to guess why Rails and Django got so popular, and what made it possible for these kinds of frameworks to enable so many people to make applications that they weren’t making before, I’d say that it’s because of all of the decisions they don’t force you to make.

This became known as being “opinionated” back in the early days of Rails, which has philosophical roots in Martin Fowler and co’s Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture book.

While the opportunity presented by serverless applications is huge, the complexity of writing, deploying, and scaling applications on AWS from scratch is unapproachable for beginners, and still far too complex for the tastes of seasoned veterans. Begin aims to help a generation of programmers bridge the gap to serverless applications.

Each step in the build process is either to support developer experience in writing code or to improve performance for the end user. Let's dive in.

Node's server-side JavaScript isn't compatible with browser JavaScript, because each implementation satisfies two entirely different systems: Node is built around a filesystem. A server has HTTP-driven IO, but the internals are all about finding the right files within the filesystem. JavaScript was created for browsers where scripts/resources are imported asynchronously via URLs.

Juice is about the tiny details. It's about squeezing more out of everything. It's about serving the user's emotional needs, not just the functional. It originated in games but can be used in other types of software.

It's about maximum output for minimum input.”

For non-game software, using a lot of Juice could be a bad thing. Games often flood the user with Juice because the intented UX (User Experience) is immersion. For a non-game app, the intent may be to allow a task to be done quickly. A small amount of Juice may enhance the UX. A lot may make the task take longer, degrading it. Before juicing, understand the intended UX. Juice should make it better, not worse.

We play with toys, but we play games. A ball is a toy, but baseball is a game. The best games are made with toys.

To create software with soul, ask yourself how do you want the user to feel? Look outside the software industry for inspiration. Find what makes you feel, ask why & use that to shape your work. The greatest crafters in our world across art, design & media do this. They base their work on feelings, opinions, experience, taste, subjectivity & ideas. Nothing averaged out or neutral. Their works built by people for people. They contain hand-crafted touches. They feel like the world around them. I

Call of Duty is a first-person shooter video game. Involving complex mechanics that can be hard to learn. Introducing them upfront in an onboarding process could overwhelm the user. Instead, the developers use non-intrusive ways to teach. For example, every time you join a multiplayer game, the user see a loading screen for 10 - 20 seconds. The developers juice the screen by displaying a tip about how to play the game. Teaching the user gradually, at a manageable pace. The user can better absorb the information because it's at a time when cognitive load is low.

A final theory was that the players should always blame themselves for failure. If the game kills them off with no warning, then players blame the game & start to dislike it. But if the game hints that danger is imminent, show players a way out & they die anyway, then they'll consider it a failure on their part; they've let the game down & they need to try a little harder. When they succeed, & the game rewards them with a little treat — scripted sequence, special effect, & so on — they'll feel good about themselves & about the game.”

Theory of Constraints: A system is only as strong as its weakest point. Focus on the bottleneck. Counterintuitively, if you break down the entire system and optimize each component individually, you’ll lower the effectiveness of the system. Optimize the entire system instead.

Talent vs. Genius: Society is good at training talent but terrible at cultivating genius. Talented people are good at hitting targets others can’t hit, but geniuses find targets others can’t see. They are opposite modes of excellence. Talent is predictable, genius is unpredictable.

Life is easier when you don’t compete. (

Demand Curves Slope Down: The harder something is to do, the fewer people will do it.

Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

Hock Principle: Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.

Creativity Begins at the Edge: Change starts away from the spotlight. Then, it moves towards the center. That’s why the most interesting ideas at a conference never come from the main stage. They come from the hallways and the bar after sunset

The Invisible Hand: Markets aggregate knowledge. Rising prices signal falling supply or increased demand, which incentivizes an increase in production. The opposite is true for falling prices. Prices are a signal wrapped in an incentive.

What if design tools were more upfront about being opinionated?

The features of untitled-1’s design tool were an aggregate of features I used often across Photoshop, Illustrator and Figma. However, I realised that these features were severely limiting, and not embracing the full potential of what digital imaging can create. This made my tool less disruptive than I wanted it to be. In future iterations, I would like to create features that would be unique to my design tool.

Having a bug-tracking or complex internal knowledge base with a schema. Complex systems need to evolve from simple ones over time (Gall's Law).

Learning a new technology in the process. Some of the most interesting parts of the stack are being rewritten in Rust, but if you don't know Rust, a startup is not the time to learn it. Unless the technology is critical to your domain, there are better things to do.