Posts by Andrea Tarrell

I have always been reasonably politically and socially aware, with a strong “justice sensitivity” streak. I got embarrassed at a party in high school once because a former 4th grade classmate couldn’t recall my name but remembered me as “that petition girl.” (Cringe, but the shoe fit. I think I circulated half a dozen petitions…

One of the biggest personal values that I’ve carried into business is an appreciation for transparency. Change is the only constant in life and business. Some days you’re up, some days you’re down. At times you’re crystal clear and charging ahead. At other times, you’re just trying to figure out the next baby step to…

In the early days of Sercante, I got the question almost daily: “What does that name mean?” After a while, people stopped asking so often. It’s just a word. You can name a company anything. But of course, there was a story behind the name Sercante. And likewise, there’s a story behind the name Xyla.…

There’s something really vulnerable about starting a new company or a new venture. First, you get excited. You daydream about what could be. The magic you’ll create for customers. The kind of team you’ll build, the people you’ll enroll in a shared vision. The community you can construct that will have you kicking off your…

Have you ever been on the receiveing end of someone sending you a ChatGPT and Claude transcript a note saying: “Please read. Very insightful.”? And then you do read the transcript… only to see short, barely literate inputs from the user generating pages and pages of AI output? That you’re then expected to read with…

Hi! I’m Andrea Tarrell. Welcome to Xyla, my new content hub. 👋 As some of you may know, I started the blog The Spot (for the artist formerly known as Pardot, but now just “The Spot.”) well in advance of Sercante becoming a business. I love writing. I learn best by “thinking out loud” in…