97: Plateaus
Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt of Studio Neat discuss the operational upheaval caused by successfully launching paid advertising, which forced them to build robust inventory tracking and financial planning systems from scratch using Airtable. They analyze the challenges of scaling a small physical product business, the 'plateau' growth model, and the lack of suitable software tools for their specific revenue tier. The episode concludes with a segment on iPhone longevity, the diminishing returns of annual upgrades, and the difficulties of sourcing cases for older models.