Just How It Is

Maybe it’s the cliché, start-of-a-new-year reflection period, or perhaps all our seemingly chaotic efforts last year are finally stabilizing. Either way,  I’ve found myself pausing this week to reflect on the strength and stability of ArtCloud.

For many of ArtCloud’s 12 years, I lived in the future. If you bumped into me at a cocktail party, it wouldn’t be long before I was ranting about some esoteric product growth strategy I had recently learned about and how I was meticulously planning to implement it, always in the service of taking ArtCloud to an ever-elusive and constantly shifting “next level.” I must have looped through thousands of these strategies and ideas over the years.

But the problem with this constant pursuit of “better” is it’s exhausting. The goalpost always moves, and worse, living in the future robs you of focus on the present. To imperfectly paraphrase Voltaire — don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

“It's equivalent to that moment when, caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella, you finally abandon your futile efforts to stay dry, and accept getting soaked to the skin. Very well, then: this is how things are.”

Oliver Burkeman

2024 was a transformative year — for me personally and certainly for ArtCloud. We’ve made key hires that have rounded out our team, shifting our focus from relentless feature development to reinforcing and celebrating what’s already working. It feels like we’re finally working ON our company instead of IN it.

The results speak for themselves: we’ve almost doubled our growth rate, launched major partnerships with Artsy and NineDot Arts, and — dare I say? — had more fun than ever before. Confident in the knowledge that we’ve built a platform at the helm of the industry in innovation and specialization, refining ArtCloud has become a game that we genuinely enjoy playing. 

This small shift feels monumental. I’m no longer waiting for some nebulous future. For the first time, I feel content with the present. I’m happy with our customers, happy with our team, happy with our strategy. And that happiness brings endurance. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every quarter. We can focus on who we are and what we do, and we can get better at it every day. And that is truly good enough. 

- Alex

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