A running series
Friday Thoughts
Short pieces on technology, business and whatever has been nagging at me that week. Some are half-formed business ideas, some are arguments I am still having with myself. Most of them start on a Friday.
Fri 2 May 2025
Today we augment people with AI. Soon we will augment AI with people.
A scary thought about the future of work — and why, if it is right, creativity and real data are the two things worth investing in now.
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Wed 12 March 2025
Bill Gates explaining the internet to David Letterman
We are arguing about which AI apps will matter. The thing that matters is the capability underneath, and the complexity it lets us build.
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Fri 14 February 2025
The media industry's jargon problem
Tech learned to explain itself to clients. Media never had to, because its clients speak the language too. AI will force the issue by making smaller clients worth serving.
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Fri 22 November 2024
Shouldn't we teach business skills in schools?
Eight hours in a Manchester A&E in 1996, and a question I have not been able to put down since: who designs the systems the rest of us live inside?
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Fri 15 November 2024
At what age do we let children on social media?
Australia legislated for sixteen. As a parent of two, I found I had fewer objections to that than I expected.
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Fri 8 November 2024
Alright, boss?
Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan. Why I would rather my team heard “blame me if it fails”.
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Mon 28 October 2024
If everything seems under control, you are not going fast enough
Mario Andretti, on a slide in my onboarding deck. Agility is not chaos — it is strategic velocity, and it is supposed to feel uncomfortable.
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Fri 18 October 2024
Uber for builders
We rebuilt a Victorian terrace in seven months instead of two years by paying thirty per cent upfront. There is a business hiding in that.
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Fri 11 October 2024
Why don't more barbershops offer subscriptions?
My old barber did not survive Covid. Predictable cash flow might have saved him — and nobody is more loyal than a man to his barber.
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Fri 26 July 2024
One calamity is better than a thousand pieces of advice
A Turkish proverb about learning the hard way, and the harder question underneath it: where do you stop letting people fail, because the stakes are too high?
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