Writing
Field notes on growth, operating, and the occasional near-death experience. New essays, roughly monthly. No hustle-porn, no fluff.
The flagship
The playbook · 15 chapters
How elite tech growth teams actually operate, translated for the PE-backed companies that aren’t SaaS. The free field guide a fund partner forwards to a portfolio CEO.
Read the playbook →The playbook
Growth, Underwritten
Nick McClish
Essays
The full ManyPets teardown: the growth system, the six levers, and the economics underneath.
Why who you are compounds faster than what you do.
Why trying to do it all is the most unbalanced thing a person can do.
Why stapling your worth to what you do is the most fragile way to build a self.
The highest-stakes decision you make isn’t what to build. It’s who the building turns you into.
The most boring industries are boring out of fear. Which is exactly why a little taste is the cheapest growth in the economy.
Why the thing you keep trying to fix is almost never where your growth is actually broken.
Headcount was never an asset. It was rent you paid on leverage, and the rent is going to zero.
PE is the best in the world at pulling growth levers. The funds that learn to build a growth engine are about to pull away from the ones that don't.
AI is driving the cost of making to zero. When making is free, the only things left worth anything are the two it can't mass-produce: attention and trust.