Venture Athlete & International Expansion Expert | Thriving as Generalist in a Specialized Economy

I’m Dominik, founder, athlete, & creator. A proud generalist. This is my story: 

For the last 7 years, I helped bootstrap one startup from 0 to 1M in revenue and built the international business from scratch for one of Europe’s fastest growing EdTech companies (50 -> 240 employees in my three years there).

All while competing at the highest level of the beautiful sport of Lacrosse, including an appearance for the German National Team at the 2022 World Games (the Olympics’ little brother).

While my professional achievements may seem more impressive on paper, representing Germany on an international stage is the feat that I’m most proud of.

I wasn’t very athletic up until my mid-twenties. Very little talent, but a lot of injuries to make up for it.

Until one day, I started working with a personal trainer. He helped me break down the fundamentals I needed to fix.

I worked hard, and I worked consistently. Showed up to every practice, every gym session. Did my recovery & mobility work daily.

4 years later, I made the national team roster.

The potential was in me. But it needed help unlocking.

Throughout my entire career, I’ve also helped humans unlock their potential, just in different ways:

- By teaching people in rural Rwanda and Brazilian homeless shelter how to make glasses for less than $1, and how to build a business around it
- By bringing unemployed nurses from Italy to Germany and teaching them German, opening a completely different career path for them
- By expanding the leading operating system for schools throughout Europe, so that education becomes more digital and thus accessible
- By writing about my experiences online and sharing them with the world

In late 2023, I made the decision to quit my cozy, well-paid, full-time job that fit my profile perfectly.

I'm on a mission to build my own portfolio career - and help others to unlock theirs. Join me on my journey towards building a portfolio of cashflow-positive, impact-driven businesses.

These businesses have one goal: help others unlock their potential. Just like my personal trainer did for me.

I wish that some of the best portfolio company owners turned creators had documented their journey from day 1, and not retrospectively.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I write for generalists like myself, who want to make a living in a specialized economy without specializing themselves. 

You can do more than one thing in your life. 
Let’s design that life together. 

Sign up for my newsletter here: www.dominiknitsch.com/newsletter

Dominik Nitsch

"Life is half over by 23" sounds like an insane take, but I think it has some substance to it. Here's why: 

When you're 5, each year represents 20% of your life. 
When you're 10, 10%. 
Etc.

With each passing year, the relative increase in experience slows down. I'm 32 now, so the current year represents ~3% of my entire life so far. And it's just gonna become less. 

So according to Sam, my life is already 75% over. Unacceptable. 

Here's what you can do about it: 

1/ Implement landmark events 
Some days, even some weeks, I ask myself: "wtf did I do today?" and can't really think of anything. It was just a normal workday with no specific things worth remembering. 

Chain too many of those days, and time passes by incredibly fast. 
But if you do something out of routine (like attending a sports event, traveling to a new place, meeting an interesting person, trying a new skill) – you'll remember that. And the more landmark events you have in a year, the longer the year will feel in retrospect. 

2/ Diversify, diversify, diversify 
If you just do one thing, it's much easier to get stuck in a rut. If you do several things really well, progress accumulates not just in your main job, but also in your side hustles. 

Subjectively, this makes life feel longer. You look back on a year and think: "damn, I did all this in three different disciplines? that's cool." 

3/ Engineer anti-routines into your life
I'm all for having a routine; the best work gets done in a familiar setting. 

But as with everything in life: "everything in moderation, including moderation". If you always stick to your routine, life passes by fast. So build anti-routines into it. These could be: 
→ setting an objective to travel to 2 new countries every year
→ consciously breaking your normal daily routine 1-2 days per week
→ meeting one new person every week 

Novelty makes life longer. 

That being said, Sam has a point. Life's short. Don't waste it doing things that mean nothing to you.

Founder @ Generalyst | building talent infrastructure for early-stage startups | 1,245 generalists read my newsletter to future-proof their career.

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Specialization is the most overrated career advice of the last decade.

“Pick a niche.”
“Go deep.”
“Become the expert in one thing.”

What sounds great in theory, doesn’t work in practice anymore. 

It locks 20-somethings in boxes they shouldn’t lock themselves into yet. Most people in their 30s don’t know what they want. How do you expect high school and university grads to know that? 

The best way to find out what you want is to sample different things. 

This allows you to:
→ build a broad foundation
→ find out what you’re actually world-class at
→ get pattern recognition 

Knowing what you’re uniquely good at via trial and error is the ultimate way of “sharpening the axe”. 

Yeah, you might be falling behind compared to someone embarking on a medical or law career. 

But down the line, you’ll have a life that works exactly for you. 

Maybe it’s one job.
Maybe it’s a portfolio of jobs, turning into a Portfolio Career.

The possibilities are endless, but just picking one thing at 18 and sticking with it for the rest of your life sounds like a pretty bad strategy if you ask me. 

PS: I wrote a few articles about building a Portfolio Career. If that sounds interesting to you, you can download my portfolio career playbook here: https://lnkd.in/dGZaPsrv

Founder's Associates exist on a spectrum – from being purely operational to being a proper sparring partner. The breakdown: 

Want your own Founder's Associate? That's our bread and butter at Generalyst. We work with A+ generalist talents of all the three levels listed here. Faster than your own recruitment process, cheaper than your headhunter. 

PS: Want me to do one for Chief of Staff, too? Comment below.

Simon Veithen and I sat down on Friday to discuss: 

→ what the hell a generalist is, and why it's the best way to prepare for the future
→ how you can acquire meta skills 
→ why job safety is an illusion
→ how to achieve non-linear results 

... and much more. 

Listen to the full 1h episode here: https://lnkd.in/dNdxH_9s

How to identify high-performing organizations: 

"The single best indication of a high-performing culture is the prevalence of former entrepreneurs. It usually portends a high-agency organization equipped with people mentally and emotionally prepared for a startup journey. Figure out what percentage of a company’s employee base previously launched businesses of their own, and try to understand why they’ve decided to forgo their independence to contribute to a new mission." – Mario Gabriele

It takes a lot as a founder to subordinate yourself again (been there, done that). When an organization manages to attract these kind of people, there's usually something special going on. 

If you're a former founder and wanna join such an organization – there's a few in the Generalyst client portfolio :)

Knurture

Design + Storytelling + Behavioral Science. 2 Partners. 250+ Customers. 1 Decade. 2k+ Sprints. $2b+ in MRR.

We're not an agency. 

We're two partners who have worked alongside 250+ D2C & SaaS teams like co-op commerce (raised $5.8M from Bessemer VP & Shopify) • Clearbrain (YC, acquired by Amplitude) • Caseology (acquired) • Nixplay. Work with us: https://knurture.typeform.com/to/qP6CES

Co-Founder and Partner

co-op commerce

I wear many hats for team co-op including brand design, marketing, innovation & strategy, product design & user research.

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• Developed the entire co-op brand including logo, color palette, typography and illustrations.

ᴍᴀʀᴋᴇᴛɪɴɢ ꜱɪᴛᴇ
• Designed, wrote copy and developed the co-op marketing site in Webflow.

ᴩʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴛ ʀᴏᴀᴅᴍᴀᴩ
• Collaborated with the team to build the product roadmap by conceptualizing, prototyping & validating new concepts.

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• Designed the co-op application from scratch.

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• Ran research to identify the most pressing needs for independent merchants & shoppers.

Fractional Creative Lead (Design, UX, Storytelling)

The Startup Factory

Triangle Startup Factory is the Southeast's premier accelerator that provides startups with hands-on mentorship and up to $200,000 in seed capital. Katie works with TSF's portfolio companies throughout the entire business development lifecycle to prioritize and undertake projects that will have the highest return on investment. She helps today’s fastest growing early stage companies maintain a relentless focus on their application’s experience.

Executive UX Strategist

Kate Page

Katie works as an independent user experience and content consultant. She creates and tests interaction patterns and microcopy for B2B and SaaS applications. She work with agencies, development shops, and expansion stage companies to make changes that have an impact on AARRR.

Freelance Experience Consultant

Connected for Cause

Connected for Cause helped student groups and small nonprofits develop a fund-raising plan. C4C hosted seminars, connected groups and planned large fund-raising events.

Founder & Co-Director

Beacon and Milestone

Katie worked with Beacon & Milestone as an independent contractor providing content solutions for marketing websites and product interfaces. She developed content audits, inventories, and style guides. She began focusing specifically on value driven interface microcopy and product focused content strategy.

Contract Content Strategist

Unblab

Collaborated with Unblab's CEO/CMO to refine the messaging around their marketing materials using customer feedback. The company was acquired by Aol in late 2010.

Contract User Researcher, Content Strategist & Web Writer

🍭 Fractional product designer & behavioral science nerd helping apps get good & sticky (300+ and counting).

I use design, storytelling & behavioral science to make your customers dance 💃🏻🕺🏽 inside. See how I've helped 250+ companies connect the dots between their product and their audience's desires here: https://tinyurl.com/y97z7uer or schedule a free 30 min call: https://calendly.com/knurture/intro

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