Every time it shows up in my feed, it tells me two things about the person who posted it:

The world of SaaS specifically is changing, no question, but I don't think it's going anywhere. The people who are nervous about it assume that anybody and everybody can build a SaaS product now, and in some cases they're right. If you want a lightweight clone of HubSpot or Calendly, you absolutely can build one.

But it all boils down to one thing: who's building it.

Just because you hand someone a hammer, some nails, and a pile of wood and they put together something that looks like a house, that doesn't make it a house, and it doesn't mean it won't fall down in the first rainstorm. Regardless of the tool, it's still the artisan, the builder, who's the key.

I was chatting with my former CTO at CoachNow, who's actually still the CTO there. He'd been looking at the product development tools his team is stuck with, decided none of them fit the way his brain works, and figured he'd just build something himself.

Over a couple of using Lovable days he had something genuinely functional for his team, and he could pull that off because he's got 20 years of:

That 20 years is hard fought, and it's not something a person with a cool idea spins up over a weekend.

Productizing your brain.

You take those 20 years of experience and build something only you could build, something that gives the end user access to your expertise in a way they've never had before.

You can stick expertise in a book or a video, but nothing compares to expertise built directly into a functioning product and dropped into a real workflow. That's the best representation of somebody's brain and experience there is.

Call it Service as a Software. The service is the product, and the software is just the wrapper around the brain that built it.

So where is SaaS actually heading? Nobody truly knows. But the ability to build, iterate, and ship faster is a superpower, and for it to be worth anything, it still has to be led by someone with the experience and the conviction to build it right.

As a founder, you're wearing all the hats in any given business. This is something I've identified with before, and especially today, as I'm working with a number of teams while also structuring and building out an entire ecosystem.

I'm context switching left and right. Calls about bridge rounds, financing models, Stripe Connect architecture, content, podcasts, franchises, and more and more. My brain is being asked to switch over and over. And that's not including jumping off quickly to grab the kids off the bus or do all the normal parenting duties in and around taking calls and meetings.

What I've always know about myself is that I do far better when I can be deeply focused on one particular task I have I have to be incredibley intentional to make that happen.

So that context switching, or what I've come to know it as and call it, attention residue, doesn't fully fry my brain.

Let's dive into the science of it first, then talk about a few things I've been doing to help me that hopefully can help you too.

In 2009, a researcher named Sophie Leroy gave the phenomenon a name in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: attention residue.

When you stop Task A and start Task B, part of your attention doesn't come with you to the new task. It stays glued to Task A, even though you feel like you've already moved on.

How much does that actually cost?

Every switch is a reboot, and reboots cost you more than you think they do.

Founders don't get to opt out of this. Investor calls, product calls, hiring calls, customer calls, school calls, and every transition between them is charging you something. You just don't see the bill until 4pm when you realize you worked 10 hours and got nothing real done.

You can't stop switching, because the job IS switching. But you can change HOW you switch.

→ Stop packing the day chronologically. Whatever came in first doesn't deserve the next slot just because it got there first.

→ Group by mental mode instead. Stack all the capital conversations together, all the product and tech conversations together, all the hiring conversations together.

Simple example: I don’t take calls on Wednesdays or Fridays so I can do deep work on select areas of the business.

→ Before you end the day, fully close it out. This doesn’t mean you did everything on your list but it gives you space to at least do a cognitive wrap up.

This is the part Leroy's research is most direct about: unfinished tasks generate the most residue, so closing the loop even partially is what actually frees your brain to be in the next room instead of still ruminating about the last one.

Tightly connected to #1

→ One 90-minute block per day where nothing gets in. No calls, no Slack, no phone, no nothing.

→ This is the block where the real sh*t gets done. The strategy doc, the pitch deck, the hard email, the actual thinking that moves the company forward.

Everything else is reaction.

If you're trying to do creative or strategic work in the cracks between meetings, the math is against you. The cracks are where the residue lives, which means you can't actually think in there. You can only react.

The work continues behind the scenes as we prep for our public launch next week. Since I gave you the logo breakdown in our last edition, I figured I'd give you an update on how it's come together as an intro to our new podcast.

Simply reply to this email, we read every single one. We’re here for ya!

Keep fighting the good fight. See ya next week 👊

-Spencer