Go deep on multiple things early. Don’t choose between specialist vs generalist. Do both. Early expertise compounds into options you can’t build later. Status lags behind reality. Today’s “safe” career paths become tomorrow’s dead ends. Banking, then consulting, then big tech, each generation thinks their safe bet will last forever.

Build global networks online. Best opportunities come through people you meet digitally. Remote work changed the game. Don’t limit yourself to local coffee meetings. Avoid train track thinking. Following predetermined paths (college → grad school → corporate → promotion) feels safe but is actually risky. You’re competing with everyone else on the same track.

The real risk is playing it safe. When you follow the crowd, you compete with the crowd. When you bet on yourself, you compete with almost nobody. Bottom line: The biggest career risks come from playing it too safe, not from betting on yourself.

Performance is something that we will give more time; behavior we won’t. And that’s because behavior is a choice, not a skill set.

We constantly have conversations around prioritization. We can’t do everything, so we have to choose. Not choosing is the worst thing you can do because now you’re compromising everything.

Larger companies … tend to become their own worst enemies. It’s not what the world does to them; it’s what they do to themselves.

Where does ambition come from? It is a lack of adjustment because if you were a perfectly balanced person, you wouldn’t have any ambition. You’re so happy with where things are, you barely have a reason to get up in the morning. But maladjusted people, they just have this disparity between where they are and what they want to do and what they want to prove.

I like people that have attitude, that have a chip on their shoulder, that have a burning need and desire to prove something.

The thing about sales is that great salespeople can’t sell a bad product, but lousy salespeople can sell a great product.

I’d rather hire more slowly but better instead of faster.

“Legacy” is not a word that I use, okay? I find … a lot of self-absorption around that stuff, like I need to live beyond the grave. I really don’t need to, and I don’t want to feel so important that that’s even a question.

Plenty of people speculate about AI replacing coding. Fewer talk about how it works today. Here’s what we’ve seen using Cursor and Claude Code inside a 12-year-old SaaS with about 40 developers.

Cursor works best if you’re fine switching editors. Claude fits better in the terminal and tends to take on bigger, feature-level work. I stick with Claude because I won’t leave Sublime Text.

Productivity is up—maybe 20 percent—but uneven. Agents are great for refactors, chores, and unblocking ideas. They’re weaker at subtle bug fixes and don’t write beautiful code. Over-commenting is common, and you still need human judgment.

The biggest gain is ambition. Solo developers now ship projects that used to take a team. People who once pushed a handful of PRs are shipping hundreds with an agent beside them. Costs are low—our heaviest Claude users barely spend fifty dollars a month.

The hard part of programming is still deciding what the software should do. Turning ideas into syntax just keeps getting faster. In the future, being a great prompter may matter as much as being a great coder.

A very nice this documentary about Fatboy Slim talking about UK DJ culture

The messy, fascinating world of turning lat/lon coordinates into human-friendly addresses. What sounds simple quickly unravels into questions about user experience, data trust, and the real purpose behind OpenBenches.

I find Horowitz’s distinction between good and bad product managers directly applicable to successful CRM architecture - the best CRM architects take ownership like “CEOs of their solution,” anticipate user needs rather than just fighting fires, and focus relentlessly on delivering business value rather than just technical specifications. These same principles apply when designing customer relationship systems that truly drive revenue and adoption. A great CRM architect, like a good product manager, creates clear documentation, makes decisive architectural choices, and measures success through business outcomes rather than feature checklists.

A useful guide on building AI agents based on OpenAI’s recommended approach

I see The Frugal Architect’s laws as essential guidelines for sustainable CRM implementations, where cost consciousness must be woven into requirements from day one rather than treated as an afterthought.

The emphasis on measuring and observing system costs aligns perfectly with modern CRM best practices, where successful architectures implement controls that keep expenses proportional to actual business value delivered.

The recognition that optimization is incremental reminds us that CRM maturity evolves over time, requiring continuous refinement based on genuine usage data rather than untested assumptions about how customers and users will engage with the system.

The Director of one of my all time favorite movies (Dune) picks a few of his favorite movies