I often struggled with the fact that as a general technologist, I couldn’t label myself with a particular mastery or skill. Before leaving my last “proper job” I found it hard to find roles that fitted my more generalist approach which led me to reflect on my experience and think that perhaps I would have been better served focussing on one of the many areas I considered that I had some level of skill in.

So maybe the answer is I’m a Master Generalist 🙃

What I originally considered to be a negative however, turned out to be a superpower because as an entrepreneur and founder, you inevitably wear many hats. The early days of any start-up demand that you become a jack of all trades, not by choice but by necessity. There simply isn’t the budget, or often the workload, to justify hiring a specialist for every role. You have to learn to do it all – from business analysis to coding and from marketing to process design.

Some may still argue that not being a master of any one thing is a disadvantage, but I’d challenge that view for small startups. In fact, being a generalist is critical. It allows you to work across disciplines and get things moving. And while you’ll eventually need to bring in experts to scale and develop a product beyond the MVP stage, those early days rely on your ability to be versatile and adaptable.

In my experience, building the right team comes later, when the time is right. For us, that first meant finding domain experts – and we have found this to be critical. Without them, you are guessing that you have found and fixed a problem in an area that you are not a master in. Whether that be Vets for our VetDx business, travel health professionals for our Pinpoint Travel Health offering or lab experts for our diagnostics process – they are all vital to work with in the initial stages.

Which is better?

There’s always the question of whether being a master in one area is better than being a generalist. I believe most founders lean toward being strong in one or two areas while having a broad knowledge base in others. It’s not about mastery—it’s about being effective. You can always hire masters when the time comes.

So maybe the answer is I’m a Master Generalist 🙃