Blog Archive

It was never the tools

Every few months I meet someone convinced their AI tools got worse. They didn't. The plateau everyone hits is a thinking problem wearing a tooling costume, and swapping models will never fix it.

What AI-augmented delivery looks like on a Tuesday

The demo where a sentence becomes an app is the least interesting thing AI does. The interesting part is the boring, repeatable loop that ships real software every day without a human ever losing the wheel.

Most people are using AI like a vending machine

Most people open a blank window, paste something in, and expect a miracle. When they get slop instead they decide the technology is overrated. The problem was never the model. It was the vending machine mindset.

The brief that fell apart

A client asked for an org-wide AI second brain, paid for a folder structure, and nobody had the software installed when the session began. A postmortem on the gap between what leadership imagines AI is and what they actually resource.

On meetings and stoking creativity

In startups, the success of a company hinges on fostering a culture where every voice is heard and valued. Effective leadership must prioritize creativity and collaboration, avoiding the pitfalls of aggressive, sales-driven tactics that stifle innovation and team engagement.

Agility vs. flinchiness

Ablility to move quickly and easily; characterized by quickness, nimbleness, and speed.

On Cofounder Communication...

In the same way that a good founder sells a vision of a product you need to sell a vision of a way of working both internally and with end users. Low friction, low risk and predictable changes. Doing less but doing it well. Anything that threatens this way of working is introducing risk. It’s not about winning the debate of adding a feature or not, it’s about evangelising for a smooth/professional way of working.

Software is an upside-down pyramid

Each additional circular 'brick' in the pyramid denotes dev expenditure of effort. In the diagram we show the initial project setup, then vertically each row on the pyramid is a feature or part of the product. Each additional feature that you add requires more effort to build as the pyramid of features grows upwards.