Why Generalists Win, Deconstructing Great Ideas, and Building Hardware in the Age of AI w/ Michael De Santis (Part 1) - Ep. 47

What does it take to go from Chief of Staff to CEO in just a few years? And in a world being eaten by AI, where is the real, defensible opportunity for builders? We’re joined by Michael De Santis, CEO of the product development and incubation studio Doris Dev—the team behind brands like Canopy and Rally. Michael breaks down why being a “Swiss Army knife” generalist is a modern superpower and reveals why the messy, complex world of building physical products is the ultimate moat when software "bits are easy."

💡 Unlocking the Playbook

The Generalist's Superpower: Michael argues that in today's fast-moving environment, the most valuable players are generalists who can dynamically solve problems across multiple domains. Instead of being pigeonholed, a "Swiss Army knife" skillset—combined with a deep sense of curiosity and a drive to "get it done"—allows you to adapt and create value where specialists can't. This mindset is critical for any founder or early-stage operator navigating the chaos of building something new.

Hardware is the New Moat: While AI makes software and operational tasks (like CX, marketing, and site development) easier and cheaper, the core challenges of hardware remain. Michael’s thesis is that "bits are easy, but hardware is hard." The ability to design, engineer, validate, and set up a supply chain for a physical product is a highly non-commoditized skill that AI can't easily replicate, creating a powerful and defensible moat for your business.

The Maniacal Founder Test: When evaluating a new venture, Michael doesn't judge the idea; he judges the founder. He looks for two non-negotiable traits: a maniacal obsession with the product and a deep belief that it will unlock meaningful value for people, and a profound curiosity paired with the humility to know what they don't know. Without these qualities, even the best idea is likely to fail when faced with the inevitable roadblocks of execution.

🤫 Part 1's Playbook Secret (The official No Trade Secret drops in PART TWO, but here is the hidden secret of PART ONE!)

The most powerful strategic advantage in the age of AI isn't a new software tool; it's the commitment to building in the physical world. While everyone rushes to automate "bits," the complex, capital-intensive, and expertise-driven process of creating tangible hardware is becoming the ultimate defensible moat. Lean into the difficulty of creating things people can touch and feel.

🗣️ Words to Build On

"I don't know of any startup, even in the early innings, that is not in need of a Swiss Army knife, right?" – Michael De Santis

"Hardware has always been hard and bits have historically been hard, and now bits are easy and hardware remains hard." – Michael De Santis

"We're not the arbiter of whether or not a product is a good idea. Right? Like, that is not my job... It is the job of the founder to tell me, you know, this product needs to exist and here's the reasons why I'm excited about it." – Michael De Santis

👤 About Michael

Michael De Santis is the CEO of Doris Dev, a New York based product development firm and incubation studio that helps companies design products, engineer them, and set up the supply chains to manufacture them. As CEO, Mike is responsible for the firm's strategy, operations, and growth, overseeing teams in New York and Hong Kong and leading its relationships with founders and brands. Beyond client work, Doris Dev runs its own incubations, including Canopy, a consumer wellness brand spun out of the studio, and Rally, maker of the first orbital massage tool, where Mike supports everything from supply chain to fundraising. 

🔗 Links & Resources

• Visit the Doris Dev Website
• Check Out Rally AI
• Shop at Canopy 

 🎧 Make sure to listen to Part 2 to hear Michael De Santis’s ultimate "No Trade Secret"

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:10

Today we're joined by Michael DeSantis, a product builder and the CEO of Doris Dev. Doris Dev is a New York product development firm and incubation studio that helps companies design a product, engineer it, and set up the site supply chain to manufacture it. Beyond the client work, the studio builds its own brands, including Canopy and Rally. And companies that have come through the Doris Dev ecosystem have shipped millions of units. Mike, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Jerome. So you started at Doris Dev uh quite a few years ago, but and you started in uh as chief of staff, is that correct? And then now fast forward a year, uh just over a year and a half, and you're sitting in the CEO seat. How how did that transition take place? And was this something that you were aware of that was gonna be your pathway when you first joined uh Doris Dev?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, great question. I mean, I so I joined Doris Dev originally in 2019. Um and uh kind of in a freelance capacity, helping them get Canopy off the ground and operationalized, and uh you know, started full-time here in March of 2020. My first day was actually the day New York shut down from COVID. So gotta love that. Came on as chief of staff really with the intention of helping uh you know manage and and build Canopy and get that business off the ground while helping support some of the Doris Dev clients over time. Um, you know, I guess when I started, uh I was probably 80% of my time was spent on Canopy. Uh and as time went by, as Canopy started to get more mature and we started to hire in folks to manage some of the systems and um kind of verticals inside of that business that I was managing, uh, you know, I started to uh spend more time working on the Doris side of things. So uh by the time we get to 2023, um, I had stepped into a managing director role here and was fully out of day-to-day work on the Canopy side of things. So um, you know, uh I think that the the conversation was always around like, hey, we need a generalist, we need somebody that can lean in and just be a doer and and uh uh you know take take nebulous tasking and and get work done and figure out ways to expand the business. And um as Canopy continued continued to expand, um, you know, the the opportunity was presented to me to to step into the CEO C here at here at Doris. So um, you know, I guess the the chief of staff to CEO pipeline can be real. Um uh but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

That's awesome. And so um one thing that you said uh I want to ask about a little bit more is the um when that you were identified as someone who just could go in and get stuff done. Um and I think that's like that's uh extremely important, but uh I think even among the many founders and entrepreneurs uh that I come across every day, like it seems to be like uh for some one of those skills that uh are harder than others to develop. And um, you know, like what's your take on that and why are you so good at that skill? Um and and what just how how do you see the importance of being able to just get things done and make decisions quickly?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I think that um I count myself to be uh I've always been a generalist. I've spent a lot of time in a bunch of different parts of e-com businesses. I started my career in CX, uh, then I was running pop-ups, and then I was managing supply chains, and I got a side hustle uh spending uh uh spending money on Meta and Facebook for for some publishers, so started you know dipping my toes into the performance marketing side of things and um you know had a brief stint at a branding agency uh helping kind of lead and run that business, which you know gave me uh a fair amount of insight into how do you operate an agency, what does the day-to-day look like, which you know, but having both that background in managing a bunch of different pieces of uh a consumer brand as well as uh spending time kind of on the the operational BD and project management side of uh an agency really you know kind of joined forces and made me an optimal, uh made it optimal for me to come onto Doris Dev. And uh, you know, I think one of the other pieces of the puzzle is Justin, who was the founder of Doris Dev. Um he was a he was a chief of staff himself back in the day. Uh he was he, you know, if you ask him, he would tell you he's a generalist as well. And I think, you know, all the stars aligned in such a way that he was like, I need generalist support. I don't need to hire somebody for a specific role. I need to hire somebody that can just come in and be dynamic and and figure things out and and tee it up. Um so you know, I think there's a back then too, I think there was like an adage around generalists not being an optimal way to kind of pursue your career. I think it is like a interesting, an interesting um path forward, certainly uh a non-generic one. And um, you know, it led me down an interesting path, which took me from essentially an independent contributor for my entire career to leading a 35-person team. So um uh, you know, very, very interesting, uh, very interesting pathway. But I highly value generalist skill sets, I think, at the end of the day. Like I I don't know of any startup, even in the early innings, that is not in need of a Swiss Army knife, right? And uh, you know, in in we we you know, we talked about talked about this briefly at the top, but we incubated another brand called Rally. Rally is a uh kind of like a next gen massage tool competitive with Hyperice and Therabody. And uh, you know, in about six months out from launch, j uh uh Justin and I were like, okay, well, we need to find Mike five years ago. Um so you know, spent we spent uh a good amount of time going out and finding that person to bring them in and you know just getting them getting them upskilled in areas that they didn't have background a background in and like making sure that they're uh smart and interested and dynamic person that cares and gets it. I think care caring and getting it is the key piece of the puzzle and from a generalist mindset. So yeah, I you know, I uh very appreciative that I found a place that that uh allowed a generalist skill set to flourish as opposed to trying to pigeonhold me into one thing. And you know, I think maybe also the power of ADHD at the end of the day uh contributes.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

It's no, it's funny, like the uh you know, you're when you're talking about uh you know finding a place that allowed you to be who you are naturally as a generalist and thrive in that. Um I I think it's funny how you know there's um there's has been that kind of tendency to want to pigeonhole people and have specialists and stuff like that. But then I've at least my outlook right now is I feel like being a generalist today in 2026 is like the it's like shifted back to is like that this is the that's the best thing you can possibly do because one none of us have any idea what the future is going to look like more than ever right now with AI and technology and just how fast things are moving, and being able to figure things out and be able to do multiple things and adapt and evolve with the flow of where everything is going and that we just don't know exactly where is gonna be what really is your biggest asset, uh in my opinion. Um and then especially then when it comes to you know what you guys do, it's like you guys are not you guys are the full product development uh from uh idea to shipping and manufacturing millions of units. And you if if I I don't know, you tell me if there were if if you had a team full of specialists um then doing something that is completely the opposite of specialized with where you guys are living and breathing with uh with your clients, I I don't see how um how you would be as effective.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah, I mean listen, I think there is a uh I I fully agree given the the access to tools that we have now, like if you're creative and strategic, you can really spin up some amazing things in a weekend that uh you know would have used to cost a hundred grand and a few months of time to get spun up, which um is very exciting to me. I I think that uh you know when I when I zoom out right now, uh hardware has always been hard and bits have historically been hard, and now bits are easy and hardware remains hard, which puts DoorStav in a really unique situation. Um the team ultimately here is filled with with experts in very narrow and specific fields, right? Um uh whether that be industrial designers, whether that be mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, quality engineers, um program managers with specific expertise in in dealing with with suppliers in China and leading those processes. So I think the the on the incubation side of things and on the building of new brand side of things, I think being a generalist is a is a superpower. And you don't even necessarily need to be a generalist so long as you're curious, right? I think the gap between um the gap that exists right now is is between the curious and non-curious, not not in any other vector, right? If if you just want to spend the time, energy, and effort into you know building out a second brain and doing some deep research with Claude, like you know, you can you can probably do all the things that you always wish that you could do in uh in a relatively short amount of time, but on the Doris side of things, we find ourselves in a position where I, you know, to your point, I have no idea what the future holds. Uh at this moment in time, I'm I feel like we've we've got a slightly stronger foothold than a lot of folks as far as uh automation and AI goes, right? I I think that one of the things that I love about Doris is we we have we we do really non-commoditized work, right? There are there are not a million competitors out there. I'm in Brooklyn right now. If I walk down the street, I could and you know tried really hard, I could probably walk into 50 different branding studios. Uh, you know, that might be two people, they might be 50, but like point being, uh there's a there's a ton of folks out there doing the work. And um, you know, on our end, it's like we do the very niche, very specific skill set that is you know broadly applicable to anybody building product at the end of the day. And um I think the other piece of the puzzle is, excuse me, uh I think the other piece of the puzzle is as this next gen of consumer comes out, right, the the AI generation of consumer businesses start to launch, their ability to operate a business and scale it up to do meaningful revenue with two or three or four people is going to be there in a way that even the generation of consumer goods brands that launched in 2020, they were not afforded that luxury. Um if you get if you tried really hard, you could build, you could build out a suite of agents that could manage your entire CX process, that could manage your paid ad spend and like optimize uh uh optimize campaign structure and and help with all that creative. I haven't seen anybody like really truly execute uh meaningfully at scale, but I've you know I've heard I've heard stories. Um, but you know, I'm still trying to crack that code myself. Um you know, email SMS, site optimization, even just developing your own site, right? Those are all things that now sit at your fingertips. What doesn't sit at your fingertips is the ability to design a product, build the CAD, engineer that product. Sure, you can go out and find factory partners, that's easy enough. But like uh having the skills, knowledge, and expertise to be able to lead a process from, hey, here's an appkin sketch and an idea all the way through, hey, we've now got a supply chain set up for scale right now is not super displaceable by Claude. If you're trying to build really high quality product that's that's uh you know is differentiated or unique in any in any sort of meaningful way. So, you know, I still I still highly value the expertise that I have surrounding me right now, um, because uh, you know, while I'm a product guy, the the guys around me are are way deeper in the weeds than than I'll ever than all ever be.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Yeah, no, and to you know, to your point of kind of that full life cycle, uh, so like when someone if a founder walks in uh and wants to work with you guys, um and like you know, uh I I think a lot about uh especially today, um like what is the value of a great idea anymore? Um and I feel like 10 plus years ago a great idea was worth something, was was highly valuable. People would invest in in just an idea with nothing physically built for a product or uh no business and we would bet on people from an idea. But I feel like today there's way more great ideas and it's uh like that's no longer like enough, or really uh it's I feel like it's more now shifted towards this environment where you could have a mediocre idea, but if you have all of the pieces aligned uh for it to set up for success, it can um it it could actually go somewhere, yeah. Um versus a a good idea with with poor execution uh on the back end and everything that comes after the idea. What so when a founder walks in with just a concept uh or an idea, what kind of things are you listening for uh to know if you guys want to work with them?

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, I think one of the big pieces of the puzzle here at Doris is we generally don't do any real marketing. We put good product out into the world, and putting good product out into the world is what gets us more business and you know, word of mouth and referral and all that good stuff. So um, you know, for us, uh one of the number one priorities is does this person have what it takes to get this thing all the way through to commercialization? And not just like, is this person an entrepreneur who I think can pull all the things, all of the component pieces together that needs to get pulled together to make it a successful launch, but also do they have enough cash in the bank to be able to not only build a high-quality product, build a high-quality brand and website, but then also spend marketing dollars to be able to start moving that product once it gets into market. Um, so uh, you know, I think that you could probably get one of these businesses off the ground for a lot less than you could have just five years ago, given the fact that if you want to be as scrappy as humanly possible, you can be as scrappy as humanly possible. And like simple brand with clawed design and uh a simple website, like um, you know, that that would have cost you a hundred grand back in the day, and you know, maybe you can get it done for for nothing. Um, you know, it's not gonna be as high fidelity as a lot of the great work uh folks do, but it, you know, it's uh a good way to get an MVP out of the world. Um, but you do still ultimately need to spend the money and invest in in building product and validating it, right? I think that it um for us, um we've got, you know, when I talk to folks about Doris Dev, um what what I what I believe that they're buying is a process that we've built over the last decade, right? That is very robust, very uh, very thought through, and that is has been forged in fire of standing up, you know, probably a thousand plus supply chains over the years, um, ranging from very simple to very complex. And uh so you bring in you bring in experts like us because like there are going to be stumbling blocks, hard stop. There's I've never I've never chatted with anybody who was like, oh wow, yes, we hit our timeline perfectly on the nose, and nothing went wrong at any point in time during the product development process. So you work with experts like us to be able to shepherd you through those uh those trials and tribulation and bump and bumps in the road that might exist. Um yeah, I don't know if that answered your question, but that's like uh generally the way I'm thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah, no, and especially when you touched on uh you know you're talking about uh when I'm asking what are you like what are you looking for and trying to find out when someone walks in with an idea, and then you started right away you started talking about the person, you know, the person with the idea, the the the founder. And you said whether they're an entrepreneur or not, and it like it you're looking for qualities in them. And um what what kind of qualities uh you know you touched on a couple, but um and how important do you think you know uh the founder you know archetype is now uh you know, especially in today, um to this you know, success or not success of uh of an idea or of a company?

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Well, I think to your point before, like it's harder to raise money than it ever has been before. I think we're the current generation of e-com founders are paying for the sins of past founders and VCs investing in multiples that never made any sense. Um, but they all convinced themselves that those multiples made sense. Um so it now puts everybody who's really who's early stage here in a really tough spot, right? I would say the likelihood that folks are are raising venture capital, venture capital pre-revenue is very low. If they are, they're raising a lot of money. Um and you know, have already have like an exit, uh, an exit in their background or something along those lines that can push that over the needle or push that needle uh uh push that needle over. I think the the things that I am looking for ultimately is like a maniacal obsession with the product and what the outcome is, right? I am not the arbiter, like one thing that I'm we always try and do here is like we're not the arbiter of whether or not a product is a good idea, right? Like that is not my job to determine whether or not this product should exist or not exist. It is the job of the founder to tell me, you know, I this product needs to exist, and here's the reasons why I'm excited about it. Um so I think that's like if I had to like say the one most important trait, it is that maniacal focus on like I believe that this product is going to unlock some meaningful value for folks, whether that is a function of you know issues that they've had uh on their own, or just like I don't know, a night in the hot tub staring up at the stars and having an aha moment around a random a random thing. Um, so I would say that that's one. And then two, um I I would say uh you know, going back to like curiosity, people who are are really curious about how things get done, people who ask questions, people who want to understand and learn more, and are also uh I don't want to say humble, but like have enough humility to know what they know and what they don't know, and like are looking to pull folks in that can provide them with advice and um and or you know support them in other ways um in areas of the business that they might not be perfectly well suited to be the executor uh on. So I I would say those are the two biggest the two biggest ones for me.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

You know, it's funny. So you reminded me like I know um I know you're uh you know very much a um a believer and obviously liver of uh kind of everything that uh uh of the framework around Peter Thiel's like zero to one. And it's one of my that was one of the first uh kind of entrepreneur books I ever read years ago, and I've read it a couple of times since. And um, especially when you talk about like that maniacal obsession with the product. And um because you know, I I believe like if if a founder's not just a little crazy about their business, like that's kind of a flag, a red flag in my opinion. It's like if this is just uh you know, like uh like you have to be I feel like that is like a key component, you have to be obsessed and truly believe in what you're doing, and it can't just be a money play and that's it. Um, because that won't fuel the hard nights and the long nights and the the no's that you're gonna get along the way, and uh you have to have something deeper and you have to be a little nutty. Uh you know. Uh I mean look at you know, like you know, uh in my you know, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, like the the single greatest innovator uh I think of our of the history of the world, and Elon, like he's he's crazy as shit. And but I mean I would never bet against anything that he set out to do. Like uh and um and then you know, as well surrounding zero to one, um, you know, I've never been a fan of uh you know companies that launch that are just doing like you know, another of the same thing. Um, you know, like and I know not everyone has a a great brand you know groundbreaking new idea of something that's never been seen before in any form uh or any way uh you know like this before. Like that's you know, not many people and you know obviously we're I think we're about to be proven completely wrong with uh with uh AI and technology and just like how fast things are going. But I'm like, you know, a lot of things have already been invented, so it's like, man, they used up all the good ideas, but d I know there's gonna be plenty more to come. But I never liked, you know, oh, let's just another company that sells this widget that does the same thing and there's no difference. And um And um I actually on my uh on my monitor I have uh a sticky note of uh a Peter Thiel quote that I love. It's uh um and it's about the uh a great company uh starts as uh and I'm paraphrasing right now 'cause I was obviously because now I'm trying to recall recall it on demand. Uh actually I'm just gonna read it. Read it. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world. And I don't think that's crazy for everyone to be able to have that mindset. You don't have to be saving babies and stopping people from dying and literally saving lives. But um, you know, and the way he words it is super interesting to me, like it's a conspiracy to change the world. Like I feel like hand in hand with that comes a lot of obsession over it. And so what you know, what's your outlook on uh uh you know, especially in with all things surrounding zero to one and being able to differentiate yourself, like if you know if people think they have to have something that's brand new idea, like how do you view uh being different and differentiating?

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I I think it's really interesting, and like I've seen this over the years too, and even both of my time at at High Tide back in the day, the branding agency, uh, where people would literally come to us and say, I want to be the Warby Parker of X, right? That was the like probably the most common uh pitch. People were doing simple things, you know. Hey, there hasn't been a cool, interesting millennial brand built in this category yet. We're gonna go we're gonna try and come in and disrupt the space. And, you know, the uh the OG adage of of D2C, like we're cutting out the middlemen, etc. etc. Now we just have new metalmen middlemen in the form of paying Facebook a lot of money to make sure that product gets in people's hands. But um uh, you know, back in the day that was that was the most common thing. Even in the early innings of DoorSteff, right? Uh so many of the products that we worked on were, hey, I'm you know, taking something that is simple and straightforward and designing it to make it look more interesting and in line with millennial sensibilities, but there's nothing like truly mind-blowing about it, uh, or truly differentiated about it other than you know, wrapping it up in an interesting brand. Um I think there's like really two ways in which I do think about this. One one is uh there is still opportunity to take products and reposition them. Uh and it can be a product that has uh I'll use Canopy as an example, definitely talking talking our own book a little bit from that perspective. But you know, when when we launched Canopy, everybody told us this is a not a good idea. Why would you do this? I don't understand. I really don't get it. Um but I think one of the key insights that we learned at the outset was like, okay, well, we can position this as a beauty wellness product. That was the original positioning of Canopy. We knew that we also had another market of uh new and expecting parents because humidifiers are a top five purchase on baby registries. It's just like you put a humidifier in your baby's room to make sure that they're breathing easy at night. So we took this old appliance, this legacy appliance that like most people think about as if I have allergies, I'm gonna put a humidifier on, if I'm sick, I'm gonna use a humidifier. But nobody was really like positioning this as like, hey, this isn't always on solution. You should really be using this. And here are benefits that exist, right? Here's how this is gonna help your skin, here's how this is gonna help your hair, here's how this is gonna help your baby. Um, so I I still think that there's probably uh I, you know, I don't have any of those ideas right now, but I still think there's probably plenty of opportunity for uh somebody getting creative around how they they go about positioning something that might already exist in folks' lives and uh just hasn't been thought of in a in a certain way. So I I do think there's like a vector, uh a vector for success that does exist there. And then I think on the on the flip side, right, it you know, today's version of Doris Dev and the products that we're working on, um you know, I would say like 60% to 70% are like genuinely unique, differentiated, a very creative idea or a combining of multiple products into one thing. Um uh we worked on uh we we we designed a product for a company called Blue Air, uh called the Restful Mini, is essentially an air purifier that is intended for sitting on your night side with an alarm clock and a wake-up lamp built in, right? So it's like, hey, we've taken three disparate products and smashed one four factor, and um so you know, I I still think like, well, I wouldn't call that like traditional innovation necessarily, like it's not like breaking the mold and creating something that uh completely didn't exist, like it existed in its component parts, but um you know I still think there's there's opportunity there. And then you know the last version of it is like uh is Rally, um, which is uh our our second incubation after Canopy. Uh it's a massage tool competitive with hyper iced air gun. Um and the original insight there was before massage guns came out, the way that folks would do self-massage was with a car buffer. So they would literally like plug a Ryobi car buffer into the wall and use it on their muscles. And um, you know, as we started doing research, we're talking to folks that, you know, have um, you know, uh our expert or physical therapists or trainers or whatever. And they're like, yeah, back in the day when I was in college, we would literally wheel in carts of car buffers to like work on the athletes after a game or something like that. And we're like, okay, this is an interesting idea. Started using car buffers on our own body, and we're like, wait, this feels amazing and better than uh than the percussive guns. And we're like, okay, well, we can take this tool that exists in a shop and figure out how to take the core principle of that rotational motion and build a product that's designed for human beings, right? And and designed for safety, design optimized for how a human would handle something when they're when they're trying to massage themselves, um, and delivers an uh an incredible amount of power, power and relief to folks. So um, you know, there are still opportunities out there. I I talk to folks that that have that have them on a regular basis. And then, you know, I think the the last piece that uh I'm observing right now and have been observing in the last six months as a function of AI is like, hey, how do we integrate AI into hardware uh and or uh in addition to um daisy chaining that together with a bunch of really interesting innovations and advancements that have happened in sensor technology. So like the shrinking down of the size of these sensors for detecting a bunch of different things is leading down a path of these really interested AI connected hardware devices that you know they're not out, they're not out yet, but they're certainly going to be coming here in the next 12 to 18 months that will be super unique and interesting. And the amount of use cases that I've had chats with folks about, I'm like, I'm like, wow, that's I never thought of taking this and this and this and putting it together and like, yeah, I totally get the vision for what the future of this product could be. Um, so yeah, all uh all very interesting opportunities on that end too.