Why I No Longer Think Breadth and Depth Are Opposites

What becoming a more thoughtful generalist taught me about depth through connection

When I was younger, depth and breadth felt like opposites. I thought depth meant staying in one lane long enough to become undeniably expert, and breadth meant being interested in too many things to be taken fully seriously. I no longer think that’s true. One of the more valuable forms of depth is the ability to see connection clearly.

Working across several domains at a fairly deep level has made me more attentive to how ideas, systems, incentives, and human behavior interact. That kind of pattern recognition may not look like mastery in the traditional sense, but it often produces better judgment.

I see this daily at Thrive. When I’m providing legal product counseling, I’m reminded that a feature is never just a feature; it’s a marketing problem, a support burden, and – usually – a quiet decision about the future business model. Prioritizing customer needs and business objectives, while being informed by potential legal and regulatory implications, is a skillset that every good product owner needs.

Or prior to joining a startup, having spent over a decade working at some of the world’s largest companies. At Davis Polk, drafting airtight acquisition agreements for M&A clients or at Morgan Stanley, drafting error-free investment agreements with startup accelerator companies, were simply table stakes. At Thrive, we’re building new things every day, and while we have strong hypotheses through data and intuition, we have to make decisions before we know definitively if customers will buy something. One world trains you to reduce error before action; the other trains you to act before complete certainty. Good judgment is often knowing when to turn on one vs. the other.

Being a generalist does not always produce the cleanest title. But it can produce unusually useful judgment.