Levy is now Chore: Making Your Beer Taste Better

Jeff Bezos once shared a powerful historical example that perfectly captures why we're excited to announce our new name and brand: Chore.

In his landmark 2008 YC Startup School talk, Bezos explained how early breweries had to generate their own power: "If you go back in time a hundred years... Every factory used to have its own electric generator. Even the guys who were just making beer had to also be in the electric power generation business. The CEO had to worry about both: 'How do I make better beer?' and 'How do I keep the lights on?'"

This problem still exists for modern startups. Every business has operations, but operations are never a founder’s vision, passion, or differentiation. In fact, back-office functions for a typical business are exactly what our new name suggests – a chore. They're never top of your list, but they need to be done. They are an annoying distraction from achieving your vision. 

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The breweries' story had a mostly happy ending. As Bezos noted, "Electricity became commoditized and could be consumed over the grid on a pay-as-you-go basis." Utility companies transformed the landscape, allowing breweries to focus solely on making better beer. The result? Better products, lower costs, and simplified operations. The breweries that did not adopt power from the grid failed as they were too distracted. 

This transformation mirrors what Amazon achieved with AWS. Founders no longer needed to build or maintain their own servers. This made it easier to start and build a business. In Bezos's words: "What companies of all sizes want is to go from their idea or vision to a successful product as quickly as possible, but the problem always is that there is a lot of undifferentiated heavy lifting that gets in the middle... It has to be done at world-class levels of excellence or your vision will fail, but it's totally undifferentiated and doesn't actually make the beer taste better." [emphasis mine]

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This is exactly why we're becoming Chore, a name that aptly describes our mission: we take on the undifferentiated heavy lifting, so you can focus on what makes your business special. Chore is your operations utility company. 

The numbers are stark: founders frequently lose 500 hours a year – almost three months! – to operational work they could outsource. Steve Jobs stated, "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on but…Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things."

Before handling any operational task internally, ask yourself:

1. Does this directly enhance what makes our product unique?

2. Is this something others could do just as well or better?

3. Would building this ourselves divert resources from our core differentiators?

Just as AWS became the utility company of the digital age, allowing startups to rent computing power instead of managing servers, Chore lets you rent operational expertise. Our promise to our customers: just like you would find it insane to build and maintain your own servers, with Chore will find it just as insane to build your own internal operations team and systems. 

We focus on operations so you can focus on your superpowers. Your competitors that fail to adopt the future of operations will slowly fade just like those early breweries. 

Our message is simple: Chore no more. This is the end of admin. Make your beer taste better. Let us handle the undifferentiated operations while you focus on what truly matters – growing an exceptional business.

Ready to focus? Hire Chore.

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