2024 work retro

Half the year with Beyond Work

Truly the ideal environment to be in during what I think is one of the biggest technological revolutions of our time. I still feel like it has given me the cheat codes for understanding what’s possible, and desirable with AI. I’ve watched the conversation go from ChatGPT obsessed to model-obsessed to agent-obsessed. 

So much of the early discussions we had at Beyond Work have proven themselves ahead of the game. I still feel like the market is some way behind. And the level of commercial focus and discipline was something I think about all the time when I’m looking at little YC teams scrambling something together, and I suspect unaware of the nightmares they are plunging into.

Product Management to Product marketing (and beyond...)

My product journey has evolved.

I’d be avoiding anything with the word marketing in it. But I’ve come to realise that in the US the traditional product trio of manager, designer, engineer has now split into a technical product manager and a product marketer to focus more on GTM, customer facing “human being” stuff. 

That’s the best description of what I’m good at. I don’t want to be another product manager at a bank. That’s not me. I’m not a safe pair of hands to chug someone else’s product along to outcome. I’m fundamentally more entrepreneurial and fundamentally less interested in being a technical product manager — which is what I think all product managers probably should be.

A return to building

Became obsessed with HouseHeld again — rebuilt a totally different conception of the product using Claude + Cursor. Couldn’t believe that what I achieved last year with excruciatingly slow and elaborate no code tools could now be easily managed with AI. 

Furthermore, the dynamic fits me perfectly, as someone who learned HTML (and arguably everything else) by copying and pasting and hacking things together until they worked.

A new network

I was very lucky to emerge into my first career just as the whole language of getting to know people completely changed with social media. This meant I was blogging and tweeting within a month, and having people like the Tech Editor of the Economist comment on maxtattonblog.com (I didn’t renew that URL, you must wonder why.)

I had an incredible career in the PR and Comms industry very quickly. And now, as I swim away from those shores, I’ve had to completely start again, mute it all and reorient myself for a new future. That has been really interesting, discovering the events that make sense, the people who you can really learn from, the cliches to avoid, and where the best work is being talked about.

From Augur to Orbit

As I’ve made the transition further into my Product epiphany, there was always a lagging feeling in my mind that there was work I enjoyed doing through Augur that I didn’t want to let go of. Furthermore, the dots between what I used to do and what I expect to do draw quite a straight line. In fact, how I was doing things at Augur is what gave me the suspicion that there were much more valuable ways to deliver that kind of work.

This finally coalesced toward the end of 2024. I went from describing my work as the “market” bit of product market fit, to a brief dip through product marketing, to having the big realisation that what I so often have brought to founders and their teams is perspective.

Sooner or later, everyone starts to miss the wood from the trees. I’ve felt it myself on my own projects. Your brain becomes full of familiar grooves, based on what has been working. A kind of gravity develops that pulls you harder and harder down to Earth.

I’m able to get close enough to orbit what you do, but with enough distance to get a proper perspective and to look out to the galaxy of ideas in the market that surrounds you.

Yes it’s a heavy metaphor. But that’s the problem which most matches what I’m good at bringing to collaboration. And the words Product and Market are really valuable anchors for the two areas in which I focus. Market helps me be distinct from the full association with Marketing.

Is it totally clear? No, we’re just getting started here. But it feels like enough for ME to run with it. That’s what happened with Augur, and it’s enough to do what’s next. 

Here’s to the next decade in Orbit.