Moats and Moonshots

Featured Essays

AI Is Intuitive. Its Infrastructure Isn’t

Rent execution, but own the control plane

Building on boring strength

Eval quality compounds only through unglamorous user friction.

Where AI Moves the Margins

Not a wave but a tide change. Will you be building harbors or clinging to docks?

Buying vs. Becoming AI

Don't give into the dogma of SaaS or conservatism of Consulting firms

Your SaaS vendor's margin is your opportunity

The dogma of SaaS

Speed is the only moat

Go fast and then go slow.

The Mid-market AI Thesis

The time is now for mid-market companies to change the pegging order.

We moved early so you won't be late

Moative's founding team has 23 years of data experience. We built, scaled, and sold AI companies before the buzz.

Moative's Point Of View & Experiences

Essays

Find the five gaps before spending on AI

Companies see charts, diagnose behavioral gaps, buy a stack of AI tools, launch training programs, and wait for productivity gains. Later, the executive teams wonder why the demo looked so good. Anthropic released a report last week that introduces a new way to measure AI's impact on the

AI Adoption: Observations from traditional industries

Our business model is unique. We build ventures in partnerships with midmarket companies in regulated and asset-heavy industries. But these ventures don't start as ventures on Day 1. They usually start as co-build/co-sell motions or consulting projects that we start for them. Occasionally our pre-built IPs come

Inertia Meets Existential Crisis

Orgs eventually redesigned how work was done. Hasn't happened yet with AI.

Nobel Laureates, Economists, & the death of SaaS

The economics dictating SaaS's demise

Your AI System Can Explain Everything and Control Nothing

See it before it costs you

Your AI System Has a Half-Life. Know What It Is?

The real question is whether you built in a way that makes the next migration cheap

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Recent Essays

Moative Essay: Enterprise Grade is Dried Spit With A Budget

For most of business history, we have built organizations the way ants build apartment blocks. An ant does not have a design philosophy. It does not sit around wondering whether the plumbing stack should be elsewhere, or whether a load-bearing wall has now become an obstacle to future growth. It

Your AI readiness blindspot

Last week we talked about why users resist AI. An underwriter who has spent 20 years eyeballing equipment across categories, spotting label problems, cross-referencing auction data against economic signals, all while copying data into a spreadsheet, will push back when you tell them a model can do it better. You

Users resist. But why?

Let’s get past the obvious push-backs – both the unspoken and the vocal – to save one’s own job. That is understandable. But there is another. There is a pushback that comes not from fear of relevance but lack of trust in AI’s ability to do the job. For

60 Days of Summer Coding

If you never wrote code, get a taste for it, but become a 10x operator by scaling how you analyze opportunities, model financial outcomes, reach out to partners, and sell a vision. I have been writing code, almost every day for the last 60 days. I had not written code

Lisa - the AI voice/text agent for utility billing companies

Listen

AI Agents for Logistics - Transportation Management

We talk to Nitin Jayakrishnan, Co-founder and CEO of Pando

Listen

AI Replacing system of records

Intelligence through chat and ephemeral user interfaces and agents will take over work.

Billie - the billing and outage chatbot for utilities

Vina - AI that hires like your best hiring manager

Hiring should be better

See the market before it shifts

The Pharma Intelligent Research Assistant

Name

Bob Crenshaw

Position

Chairman & Co-CEO, Exceleron

Industry

Energy & Utilities

Application Area

Billing, Voice AI

We worked with Moative founders 14 years ago. We partner with them now to co-build pioneering AI solutions for the utility industry. There is one constant: They were on the cutting-edge then & now, and yet they deeply invest in relationships & put the time it takes to understand our industry.

video

Billie - the billing and outage chatbot for utilities

video

Vina - AI that hires like your best hiring manager

Hiring should be better

video

See the market before it shifts

The Pharma Intelligent Research Assistant

main

AI Agents for Logistics - Transportation Management

We talk to Nitin Jayakrishnan, Co-founder and CEO of Pando

Thoughts, stories and ideas.

AI Is Intuitive. Its Infrastructure Isn’t

Building on boring strength

Where AI Moves the Margins

Buying vs. Becoming AI

Your SaaS vendor's margin is your opportunity

Speed is the only moat

The Mid-market AI Thesis

We moved early so you won't be late

Find the five gaps before spending on AI

AI Adoption: Observations from traditional industries

Inertia Meets Existential Crisis

Nobel Laureates, Economists, & the death of SaaS

Your AI System Can Explain Everything and Control Nothing

Your AI System Has a Half-Life. Know What It Is?

Moative Essay: Enterprise Grade is Dried Spit With A Budget

Your AI readiness blindspot

Users resist. But why?

60 Days of Summer Coding

Lisa - the AI voice/text agent for utility billing companies

AI Agents for Logistics - Transportation Management

AI Replacing system of records

Billie - the billing and outage chatbot for utilities

Vina - AI that hires like your best hiring manager

See the market before it shifts

Bob Crenshaw

Billie - the billing and outage chatbot for utilities

Vina - AI that hires like your best hiring manager

See the market before it shifts

AI Agents for Logistics - Transportation Management

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