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Coding used to be a superpower. If you wanted a website, you learned HTML and CSS. Now you can drag and drop with hundreds of different tools.
Same goes for SaaS applications. You used to code everything from scratch. Then people standardized sets of code libraries that you can import with one line. And now you just call an API or drag and drop with a no-code tool. A seven-figure dev might build it better, but is it $999,990 better? Probably not.
The point is that there are new tools and your edge lies in taking advantage of them.
Solo game developers and indie studios are building games with AAA graphics using tools like Unreal Engine 5.
Savvy entrepreneurs are building apps with no-code tools like Bubble or Glide in just a few days.
Marketers put together beautiful looking assets with tools like Canva.
The 'numbers-inclined' are using tools like TensorFlow to build and train ML models from their bedrooms.
Technology used to be gated. Now the gate’s wide open and most people haven’t noticed.
We have more leverage at our fingertips than any generation in history.
People think coding is required because it used to be. The original leverage was writing the code. But just like coders now import libraries instead of reinventing algorithms, the new class of builders imports entire tool stacks.
The real value today is in stacking the right tool for the right job to produce an outcome that would have been impossible to build otherwise.
Don’t be the star drummer in the orchestra be the conductor pulling the entire system into harmony. (I just watched Whiplash which is why I thought drummer. One of JK Simmons’s best movies).
Don’t build the tools. Stack the right ones that already exist.
A technostacker is someone who starts with a clear outcome, then assembles the fastest, cheapest, and most efficient set of tools to get there.
This is quite literally the definition of entrepreneurship.
As Peter Drucker said “Entrepreneurship is ‘the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.’”
Combine to Create
Why New Leverage Always Looks Like Cheating.
There are too many great tools available today to go back and reinvent the wheel. The biggest obstacle to leveraging technology is usually the stigma cast on those who use it by luddites.
New leverage is often dismissed as “cheating” by those who don’t understand it. Leverage lowers effort so the high-effort luddites see it as a threat to their identity.
Every new creative or technical medium is first dismissed by those fluent in the last one:
Photography was seen as cheating by painters.
Synthesizers were mocked by classical musicians.
Auto-tune was rejected by vocal purists.
AI tools today are seen as lazy or fake by traditional coders or artists.
This happens because each generation builds status on mastering the hard way and resents tools that collapse that effort curve.
Ignore the gatekeepers. New leverage always looks like cheating until it becomes the new standard. Capitalize on that gap.
And guess what. Your customer doesn’t care about how you did it. They just want the result. And they want it faster, better, and cheaper.
Check out some of these quotes:
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months.” - Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox executive, 1946
“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.” President of the Michigan Savings Bank, advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest, 1903
“Online shopping will fail.” - Paul Krugman, ‘economist’, 1998
Every wave of leverage is mocked by those who mastered the last one.
First they laugh, then they fear, then they lose.
Like Steve Jobs said “Creativity is just connecting things.”
The lesson: Combining is often more powerful than creating from the ground up. Dig deep into any ‘invention’ and it’s usually just a new combination of several things that already exist.
Look for Scale with no/low Additional Costs
A video game is largely the same cost to create whether it sells a few dozen or a few million copies.
Print-on-demand books scale with low additional costs.
Licensing a proprietary drug scales the same way.
Want to scale an old-school business model? Turn it into a franchise model and have others front the capital.
It’s not just digital that scales. Creative thinking and new business models will get you there.
Build for Now, Optimize Later
I’ve killed so many of my own ideas because I couldn’t think of how to scale them. Meanwhile, I never even bothered to get my first customer. Rookie mistake.
Don’t try to predict the future. Use what is out there now to build for your first customer. Then start layering in systems and tools as you go along.
Thinking in terms of 10x is probably about the right way to approach it. A business selling the same product probably has a very stack to support 100 versus 1,000, versus 10,000 customers.
Paul Graham says “Do things that don’t scale”. What he really means is "Do things that don’t scale (at first)”. Build in the scaling later.
So how do you actually build like a techno-stacker?
Step 1: Start with the outcome.
Don’t start with the tool. Start with the outcome. Then stack the fastest path to get there.
This happens a lot at large companies. They often have teams and technologies in search of an outcome to ‘optimize’.
Take Google Glass for example. Google engineers spent a bunch of time and money developing Augmented Reality glasses. Impressive tech. No real job to be done. The product died less than 2 years later (although they are still toying with this idea).
All because they started with the tool instead of the outcome.
Here’s what right looks like. Drew Houston was tired of emailing himself files (real problem with a defined outcome). He built a demo video and a sign-up page for validation. Then built DropBox by stacking several existing technologies like cloud storage, file sync, and APIs. Now DropBox is a publicly traded company.
Outcome first, tools second.
Step 2: Find the tool.
Since you’ve defined the outcome, now you can find the tool. There are usually infinite tools you can stack to accomplish the goal. Settle on a stack that is good enough. Don’t over-optimize here. A ‘good enough’ solution is probably better and cheaper than an over-engineered one.
Step 3: Test and iterate.
As you deploy your stack in the real world, you'll start to see what can be tweaked. This feedback is verified by real-world application so you know it is worth acting on.
Now you can start optimizing and tweaking your stack.
Continue iterating and evolving as new problems arise or take priority.
To bring this all home, you don’t need to be the best coder.
You don’t need to build from scratch.
You just need to be smart enough to stack the right tools.
And in a world full of tools, the person who knows how to stack them… wins.
The big idea: You’re not a coder. You’re a composer. And today, your orchestra is made of APIs, AI models, and no-code platforms ready to play.
“Take the best parts from what already exists and remix them into something new.” - Rick Rubin.
Same goes for SaaS applications. You used to code everything from scratch. Then people standardized sets of code libraries that you can import with one line. And now you just call an API or drag and drop with a no-code tool. A seven-figure dev might build it better, but is it $999,990 better? Probably not.
The point is that there are new tools and your edge lies in taking advantage of them.
Solo game developers and indie studios are building games with AAA graphics using tools like Unreal Engine 5.
Savvy entrepreneurs are building apps with no-code tools like Bubble or Glide in just a few days.
Marketers put together beautiful looking assets with tools like Canva.
The 'numbers-inclined' are using tools like TensorFlow to build and train ML models from their bedrooms.
Technology used to be gated. Now the gate’s wide open and most people haven’t noticed.
We have more leverage at our fingertips than any generation in history.
People think coding is required because it used to be. The original leverage was writing the code. But just like coders now import libraries instead of reinventing algorithms, the new class of builders imports entire tool stacks.
The real value today is in stacking the right tool for the right job to produce an outcome that would have been impossible to build otherwise.
Don’t be the star drummer in the orchestra be the conductor pulling the entire system into harmony. (I just watched Whiplash which is why I thought drummer. One of JK Simmons’s best movies).
Don’t build the tools. Stack the right ones that already exist.
A technostacker is someone who starts with a clear outcome, then assembles the fastest, cheapest, and most efficient set of tools to get there.
This is quite literally the definition of entrepreneurship.
As Peter Drucker said “Entrepreneurship is ‘the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.’”
Combine to Create
Why New Leverage Always Looks Like Cheating.
There are too many great tools available today to go back and reinvent the wheel. The biggest obstacle to leveraging technology is usually the stigma cast on those who use it by luddites.
New leverage is often dismissed as “cheating” by those who don’t understand it. Leverage lowers effort so the high-effort luddites see it as a threat to their identity.
Every new creative or technical medium is first dismissed by those fluent in the last one:
Photography was seen as cheating by painters.
Synthesizers were mocked by classical musicians.
Auto-tune was rejected by vocal purists.
AI tools today are seen as lazy or fake by traditional coders or artists.
This happens because each generation builds status on mastering the hard way and resents tools that collapse that effort curve.
Ignore the gatekeepers. New leverage always looks like cheating until it becomes the new standard. Capitalize on that gap.
And guess what. Your customer doesn’t care about how you did it. They just want the result. And they want it faster, better, and cheaper.
Check out some of these quotes:
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months.” - Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox executive, 1946
“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.” President of the Michigan Savings Bank, advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest, 1903
“Online shopping will fail.” - Paul Krugman, ‘economist’, 1998
Every wave of leverage is mocked by those who mastered the last one.
First they laugh, then they fear, then they lose.
Like Steve Jobs said “Creativity is just connecting things.”
The lesson: Combining is often more powerful than creating from the ground up. Dig deep into any ‘invention’ and it’s usually just a new combination of several things that already exist.
Look for Scale with no/low Additional Costs
A video game is largely the same cost to create whether it sells a few dozen or a few million copies.
Print-on-demand books scale with low additional costs.
Licensing a proprietary drug scales the same way.
Want to scale an old-school business model? Turn it into a franchise model and have others front the capital.
It’s not just digital that scales. Creative thinking and new business models will get you there.
Build for Now, Optimize Later
I’ve killed so many of my own ideas because I couldn’t think of how to scale them. Meanwhile, I never even bothered to get my first customer. Rookie mistake.
Don’t try to predict the future. Use what is out there now to build for your first customer. Then start layering in systems and tools as you go along.
Thinking in terms of 10x is probably about the right way to approach it. A business selling the same product probably has a very stack to support 100 versus 1,000, versus 10,000 customers.
Paul Graham says “Do things that don’t scale”. What he really means is "Do things that don’t scale (at first)”. Build in the scaling later.
So how do you actually build like a techno-stacker?
Step 1: Start with the outcome.
Don’t start with the tool. Start with the outcome. Then stack the fastest path to get there.
This happens a lot at large companies. They often have teams and technologies in search of an outcome to ‘optimize’.
Take Google Glass for example. Google engineers spent a bunch of time and money developing Augmented Reality glasses. Impressive tech. No real job to be done. The product died less than 2 years later (although they are still toying with this idea).
All because they started with the tool instead of the outcome.
Here’s what right looks like. Drew Houston was tired of emailing himself files (real problem with a defined outcome). He built a demo video and a sign-up page for validation. Then built DropBox by stacking several existing technologies like cloud storage, file sync, and APIs. Now DropBox is a publicly traded company.
Outcome first, tools second.
Step 2: Find the tool.
Since you’ve defined the outcome, now you can find the tool. There are usually infinite tools you can stack to accomplish the goal. Settle on a stack that is good enough. Don’t over-optimize here. A ‘good enough’ solution is probably better and cheaper than an over-engineered one.
Step 3: Test and iterate.
As you deploy your stack in the real world, you'll start to see what can be tweaked. This feedback is verified by real-world application so you know it is worth acting on.
Now you can start optimizing and tweaking your stack.
Continue iterating and evolving as new problems arise or take priority.
To bring this all home, you don’t need to be the best coder.
You don’t need to build from scratch.
You just need to be smart enough to stack the right tools.
And in a world full of tools, the person who knows how to stack them… wins.
The big idea: You’re not a coder. You’re a composer. And today, your orchestra is made of APIs, AI models, and no-code platforms ready to play.
“Take the best parts from what already exists and remix them into something new.” - Rick Rubin.
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