Moats and Moonshots
Thoughts, stories and ideas.
-
Aug 16, 2026
Don't shortsell your know-how to AI vendors
An FDE's deliverable is a working outcome inside the customer's environment. An FDE's byproduct is a product. If the byproduct is not a product, you do not have an FDE. You have a contractor.
-
Aug 2, 2026
A poem on the half-life of AI
Judgment is where the moat is. Judgment is commodity. There is no moat. There is only cash flow. Every rung was a real claim, defended by real people, funded at a real premium, correct for a few months to a few years. Then the half-life shortened again.
-
Jul 26, 2026
Software is becoming malleable
Software is becoming malleable. The future isn't SaaS or services, but software users can extend themselves. Every product will become a platform with building blocks and guardrails, putting the roadmap in the hands of its customers.
-
Jul 19, 2026
After Intelligence, Craft
The fashionable answer to abundance in AI is taste. When anyone can generate an interface, write a campaign, design a product or produce a strategy, the argument goes, the advantage will belong to those who can distinguish the excellent from
-
Jul 5, 2026
Forward Deployed Engineers. Embrace with Caution.
Forward-deployed engineers can accelerate your AI journey, but whose interests are they serving? The biggest AI decision isn't the model you choose. It's who owns your architecture, your data, and the freedom to change course.
-
Jun 28, 2026
Reliable AI vs. Coin Flip
Ask the same AI the same question twice and you may get two different answers. The difference isn't always the model. It's often how much guessing your data forces it to do. Better data doesn't just improve AI. It makes it reliable.
-
Jun 21, 2026
Hello CEO! Own Your Data. Own Your AI. Own Your Destiny.
Last week I wrote about how AI companies in verticals treat their customer base as fuel rods to build their nuclear power. This week I am going to expand on it and make a case for working with a systems
-
Jun 14, 2026
The AI Trap Door
I have been on the road for three weeks now. Pensacola was pleasant. Memphis was muggy. Buffalo was chill. But the mood in the small business is one of nervous anticipation. It's like welcoming back a long-lost sibling,
-
May 17, 2026
The Doers, The Watchers and a Two-Week Milestone
Depending on whom you talk to you get one of the three immutable truths about AI implementations: 1. The tooling is unstable, observability is difficult, and security is a nightmare 2. Whatever works is magical, but when the job depends
-
Apr 26, 2026
Moative Essay: Earl, Tom, and The Guild
Tom is a firefighter. Years ago, we built him what was basically an Excel-spreadsheet version of AI. No agents. No copilots. No white paper about the future of work. Just a thing that helped him make better decisions under pressure.
-
Apr 19, 2026
Moative Essay: Systems of Interia
Two of us write this newsletter, alternating Sundays. Every now and then, the shape is call and response: one week someone lays down a theme, the following week the other tries to answer. When that happens, most weeks the response
-
Apr 12, 2026
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