The Cost of Scale Is Belonging

Why connection, not consistency, might be the next real advantage

Something’s been bugging me.

Big tech brands spend millions on ads, videos, posts. Everything looks perfect, sounds right, but feels empty. Like they’re trying to be liked by everyone, and end up meaning nothing.

Meanwhile, I stumble on tiny brands with no budget and no polish, but they hit. Hard. A weird local joke. A rough video that feels human. Not trying to please everyone. Just speaking to someone… usually someone like me.

We’re all tired of the same-old, sell-everything, brand-performative nonsense.

Big brands feel numb.

Small ones? Alive.

The Tradeoff Nobody Talks About

Part of it is structure, obviously. Once you’re at a certain size, you’re managing legal, compliance, multiple regions, risk - all the invisible constraints that shape every tweet, visual, and tone of voice. Global consistency becomes the religion. And understandably so. You can’t afford to offend or confuse a market when you’re serving hundreds of millions of users.

But the cost is cultural intimacy.

You lose the messiness, the rawness, the realness that makes something feel like it belongs to you. You end up with clean gradients, neutral copy, slogans about efficiency and productivity. It doesn’t mean anything’s wrong - but also, nothing really feels right.

It just doesn’t feel like anywhere. It floats in this cultureless space - too polished to feel personal, too safe to feel specific. Too normal.

That’s why people connect with micro brands so much more. It’s not about scale. It’s about proximity. About how close a brand feels to your real world.

Connection Needs Specificity

I’ll give you an example.

A few weeks ago, I saw a campaign by a South London chicken shop chain celebrating its 40th anniversary. There was something about it - the way it looked, the people in it, the clothes, the music… that made me pause. It wasn’t just a brand campaign. It was a moment. It was raw. Real. It felt like a love letter to a very specific place, a vibe, a way of living. It felt like home. If you’ve ever walked around South London, you’d get it instantly.

But if you haven’t? It probably wouldn’t mean much. And that’s the point.

Tech brands rarely get that close. They speak in abstractions: speed, innovation, impact, AI. But they rarely say anything that feels rooted in a place, or a real moment in life. They don’t talk like people who live somewhere. They talk like products that could’ve been made anywhere.

And it’s not just an aesthetic problem, it’s an emotional one. Culture is made of small things. Local details. Inside jokes. Specific frustrations. Micro brands thrive in those cracks. Global brands often pave over them.

When Software Becomes Status

Some tech brands do manage to create connection, but it’s a different kind. It’s built around status, not belonging.

You use Superhuman, not because you love the brand, but because you like what it says about you. Sorry, no harsh feelings... I'm sure the product is good too, but that Superhuman signature at the end... Same goes for Notion, Linear etc - these brands use aesthetics, scarcity, or design to create the illusion of a lifestyle.

And to be fair, that’s its own form of culture. But it’s a fragile one. Built more on how it looks than how it feels. On what it signals, not what it says. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that - we all work with the tools and tactics we have. I just wonder if there's more room for depth. For presence. For something beyond the performance.

And when the team behind it changes, or the founder exits, or the hype fades - so does the connection. Because it was never really a relationship. Just a projection. Signalling.

Where Did the Soul Go?

Founders are often the last remaining piece of emotional proximity in tech. When they’re visible, active, tweeting, building in public - you feel like there’s a person behind the brand. Someone with taste. Someone with beliefs. That energy is infectious. They make and kill brands. Dear Elon... such a bad example.

But many of them don’t stay. And honestly, I don’t blame them. Building a company for 10+ years is brutal. Eventually, they want their exit. That’s the startup dream.

But what’s left after that? A product that works. A marketing team trying to maintain the vibe. And a brand that slowly becomes… generic. Not bad, just blank.

The Real Question - Should Software Even Try?

This is where I keep circling back. And I don;t have an answer.

Does software need to mean something emotionally? Most of it already does, at least on the surface. But can it go deeper? Can it move past productivity tropes and start building something culturally grounded, more human, more instant?

I think for a long time, we were okay with function. But after years of remote work, endless tools, and transactional online interactions, something shifted. I’m seeing it in clients who ask for in-person meetings again. In team offsites that feel more like therapy than strategy. In my own desire to feel energy - not just alignment. To get out of the house, no matter how comfortable my setup is.

We’ve all gotten used to efficiency. But we’re craving connection again.

So maybe yes - maybe even software should mean more now. Not every product has to be your best friend. But the ones that go a little deeper, speak a little more honestly, or show up a little more like people … they’re the ones we remember.

What’s Next?

Ironically, the thing that might actually help is the one thing we didn’t expect: the bloody AI we’re all tired of hearing about. Yeah, I know .. I had to end my email with this too...

Because maybe AI will let brands go hyperlocal again - not with big teams or complex ops, but with adaptive messaging, context-aware visuals, and language that shifts based on where you are and how you feel. AI that replicates culture at a hyperlocal level.

Imagine a product that doesn’t just work, but talks to you like it knows where you live. A website with a homepage image taken just three blocks away.

Because in a world where everything looks and works the same, closeness is the only differentiation that still matters.

Am I alone here?