The Hidden Cost of "We Do Everything" is an essay by Alexander Shartsis, published on his Skyp newsletter, arguing that horizontal messaging is a silent killer even for companies whose products legitimately span multiple verticals. Its central distinction is between what a company does and how it talks about what it does: serving many use cases can be operationally sound, but telling the market you serve everyone flattens positioning, dilutes differentiation, and makes the brand forgettable. Shartsis frames the strategic risk in a single line — "Horizontal is fine. Horizontal messaging is fatal" — and advocates for specific, vertical-led narratives that let a prospect see themselves inside the story before the broader platform capabilities are revealed. The piece sits in a longer lineage of positioning writing from April Dunford and others, but pitches the lesson specifically at founders tempted to list capabilities rather than name a wedge.
