I’ve been posting every month or so on Substack. My longer, more thoughtful pieces. (Where as this blog is much more ad-hoc, short and long) I quite like Substack, and have found that I spend a reasonable amount of time there each day, reading through articles. It feels like it is the only place I can find long form pieces these days (pour one out for Medium which had such potential and...
Two typical ways companies charge for AI: Consumption pricing — you use an agent, you pay per use. Transparent, fair, expected. Subscription inflation — ‘features’ get quietly baked in, then cited as justification for price increases you never agreed to. The first is fine. The second is the rort. The pattern: Company adds small AI enhancements you never requested (assistants, inline helpers...
Most of the vibe coded CRM ‘products’ I see breathlessly announced on social (mainly X, but I see them as screenshots on Threads funnily enough) seem to be just Temu HubSpot. There’s a market for these vibe coded CRMs, just like there’s a big market for Temu shit no doubt, but even Temu doesn’t pretend the crap they sell is quality. Will be interesting to see if the rising token costs (and...
Part of streamlining life and business is the action of consolidation. It can start with simple things, just to get the ball rolling. Here’s a few simple examples I’ve actioned in my personal life this year: cancelling a bunch of domain registrations I’ve had for years, but know I’ll never end up using cancelling streaming services reducing the number of skin care products...
People are completely overwhelmed. In their personal lives. In their professional lives. From the simple basics of everyday life (which toothpaste to buy) through to the news they consume, the advertising they are blasted with, the ‘advice’ they are subjected to on social, the streaming services they watch, the inboxes they avoid, people are struggling to… think, let alone make...
The process of adding new features, tools and AI garnish to a software platform, with the effect of overwhelming and alienating the original customer base who loved it for its intuitiveness and ease of use. Usually followed by a series of paper cut pricing increases to ‘reflect the added value’ of the ‘enhancements’. Enterprisification The finale stage of complefixying...
As a business owner it can be easy to fall into a reductionist mindset and assume everything is a business problem to be solved. Sometimes that’s useful, other times not. Here’s an example (which I probably saw on social somewhere*), which you may find useful (I did), maybe not. It’s about your health. Treat your body as a business with a health profit & loss. Income = sleep exercise strength...
Doing what you Hate so you can do what you Love I’ve been chatting about strategic grind with the team lately. Every business owner and team member has things in their day they don’t like doing. It’s part of work. In this column, we’re going to discuss the kinds of work you don’t like doing – but still should do. What Is the Grind? The grind is all those tasks you do, projects you work on...
It seems there are (at least) two levels of stupid. Level 1 stupidity is being totally uninformed. On big topics. Fuel prices, vaccines, One Nation, ICE, Iran, Trump, raw milk, etc. That’s the first level of stupid. But the second level of stupid is when people who actually understand the issues – for example, experts in their fields, understanding the complexity of the world, informed on...
Panels at Events (conferences, trade shows) are essentially the seafood extender of the event. They are the blunt instrument of lazy organisers who have access to high-powered guests but don’t know what to do with them. So they organise a ‘panel’ and then insert an unprepared moderator to shotgun questions at intelligent panel members, but hold them to strict times that limit...