Insights
Perspectives on AI strategy, technology leadership, and building companies that last, for startup founders and small to mid-market companies. From someone who has done it.
The people making the biggest AI decisions understand it the least
Understanding of where AI is heading concentrates at the frontier, while the budgets and decisions sit far from anyone who has built with the tools. Why that gap matters, and how to question the advice you are given.
Traditional moats are dissolving. Size and capital no longer protect you
Scale, capital, and headcount used to guarantee dominance. AI is changing the equation. Competitive advantage now flows to the companies that move fastest and adapt smartest, regardless of size.
AI is about to split the job market in two
AI will not just automate jobs. It will rebuild the entire market that matches people to work: personal career agents, employers who hunt talent before roles exist, and a bifurcation that rewards the top tier. Here is what is coming, and where you want to be standing.
From AI that talks to AI that works: the autonomous leap of 2026
2025 gave us AI that talks. 2026 is the year of AI that works: autonomous agents that pursue your goals around the clock. Here is what is happening, starting with an open source project that grew out of nowhere.
Agentic AI in 2026: what actually works in production
Agentic AI is moving from slides to production. The teams getting it right share specific patterns around scope, tooling, and human oversight. Here's what I've learned building agents that actually ship.
You're not talking to an LLM. You're talking to a system
When you use ChatGPT or Claude you are not talking to a model. You are talking to a system: guardrails, routing, caching, retrieval, compaction, and more. Why that matters for the AI decisions you make.
Most of what you do at work will be automated. The interesting question is what won't
AI handles routine work faster and cheaper than humans. That's settled. The exciting strategic question is where humans are irreplaceable, and how to build your organisation's advantage around those capabilities.
If your AI strategy is just ChatGPT, you don't have one
Most leaders now equate AI with large language models. But the frontier models are available to everyone at the same price, and they are often the wrong tool. The real advantage is not the model. It is everything you wrap around it.
How to build an AI strategy without a CTO
You can build a sound AI strategy without a CTO, and without being technical. What you cannot do is hand the question to whoever is selling you the technology. Here is the method for non-technical founders and SME leaders.
You don't need to build a brewery to drink a pint of beer
The most expensive software decision a founder makes is often the first one: deciding to build. Here is how to choose between building, buying, no-code, and an agency, and how AI changed the answer in 2026.
When your best AI model can vanish overnight
In June 2026 a US government directive forced Anthropic to disable its two best models worldwide, days after launch. The lesson outlasts the news: single-vendor AI dependence is now a live continuity risk. How to build optionality and model portability into your stack.
Most companies are adopting AI. Few are adopting it well
84% of organisations have AI tools. A handful are getting transformative results. The difference isn't the technology. It's how it's deployed. Here's what the best teams are doing differently.
How to unlock AI ROI: what the 20% do differently
80% of AI projects return little because the return was never engineered in. It's fixable. The projects that deliver share specific, repeatable patterns in how they are scoped, measured, and governed from day one.
What to do when your AI pilot fails
Most AI pilots fail, and most failures are recoverable. Here is how to diagnose what actually went wrong, decide whether to salvage or restart, and why the people who built it are usually the wrong ones to fix it.
Why your AI spend isn't showing up in the numbers
Most AI spend isn't showing up on the P&L yet, but some organisations are seeing transformative returns. The difference isn't the technology. It's the deployment approach, and it's fixable.
Stop counting AI use cases. Redesign three value streams instead
Pilot purgatory has a sequel: use-case purgatory. 47 deployed AI assistants is not a strategy. Here's how to pick three value streams and rebuild them end-to-end, the way the operating model needs to change.
Turning AI theatre into AI that moves the numbers
Innovation labs and pilot programmes look impressive in quarterly updates, but theatre is a choice, not a fate. Here's how to move from performative adoption to real, measurable production impact.
AI is not just for engineering. Every function in your business can use it today
Finance, marketing, sales, legal, customer support, project management. AI tools can improve every business function right now. Here's what actually works in each, and what doesn't yet.
The dual-stream strategy. Protect your current business while building what replaces it
Every profitable company faces the same question: how do you invest in AI without cannibalising your own product? The answer is a dual-stream approach that protects today's revenue while building tomorrow's advantage.
Who is accountable for AI on your board?
In most SMEs, no one can say who is accountable when an AI system causes harm or cost. As regulation tightens in 2026, that gap is a real liability. The fix is not a Chief AI Officer. It is a named owner and proportionate governance.
Shadow AI is your next audit finding
78% of employees are already using AI tools. That's not a problem. It's a signal of demand. Channel it with the right governance framework and you turn a compliance risk into a competitive advantage.
Agent sprawl is the new shadow IT. Your business needs a control plane
Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and IBM all shipped agent governance platforms in the last thirty days. Here's why every business will need an agent control plane within twelve months, and what one actually does.
Uber burned through its token budget by April. Your business will be next
AI FinOps is following cloud FinOps by about a decade, and the curve is steeper. Token spend is becoming a board issue. Here's why your CFO needs a token budget by Q3, and what one looks like.
Headless is the new mobile-first. Agents are about to become your biggest user
Box, Zapier, Salesforce and Stripe all said the same thing in April: agents will become the dominant users of software. If your product can only be used through a UI, it cannot be used by them. Here's what to do about it.
What two hours with Anthropic's agent team taught me about building AI
Anthropic ran a workshop on their Agent SDK. Five principles emerged that match everything I've seen building production agents, and one that changed how I'll build them next.
The quality you can't see is the one that kills you
Software has a visible quality and an invisible one. The visible quality wins users. The invisible quality, scale, security, maintainability, decides whether your company survives. Three war stories, and why AI makes this more urgent than ever.
75% of Google's new code is AI-generated. So what?
AI-generated code percentages are vanity metrics. They tell you nothing about whether engineering is delivering more value. Here are the five metrics your board should actually be asking for in 2026.
AI made developers 19% slower. Here's what they were doing wrong
The most rigorous study on AI coding tools found a surprising result. But the real insight isn't the headline. It's that the gap between using AI and using AI well is enormous, and closeable.
You're not a 10x engineer. You're an orchestrator, and that's harder
The best developers aren't writing code faster. They're directing AI agents, making architectural judgements, and maintaining the context that machines can't hold. The role hasn't been eliminated. It's evolved into something more valuable.
Agile is now the bottleneck
Agile's ceremonies were built for a world where building was slow. Agentic coding made building fast, so the heavy process now holds you back. What works instead: set a destination and navigate to it daily.
The training ladder is broken. And nobody has a plan to fix it
AI is reshaping the junior developer role, and with it, how the next generation of senior engineers gets built. The companies solving this now will have the strongest engineering teams in five years.
The best technology rarely wins. The best-led team does
Superior products lose to inferior ones all the time. More than the technology, the capital, or even the strategy, the factor that decides whether a technology business succeeds in the market is the quality of its leadership. Here is what strong leadership actually consists of, and why it is the real engine of product and market success.
How big tech wins the talent war, and it isn't the money
I spent twelve weeks interviewing for senior roles at five big tech companies to study their cultures from the inside. The thing that keeps the best people is not compensation. It is psychological safety, and it is a hard operating requirement, not a soft one.
After 20 years as a CTO, I learned the engineering was the easy part
Deep technical skill is real and rare, but for a natural technologist it is the most masterable part of the job. The hard part, the part that decides whether the engineering matters, is leadership. A personal reckoning.
Your world-class engineering team is already in the building
Most leaders who inherit an underperforming technical organisation reach for the wrecking ball: reorganise, replace the stack, replace the people. It is almost always the expensive mistake. The better approach is to sculpt the organisation you already have into the one you need, without ever stopping delivery.
Why your tech recruiter isn't on your side
Recruiters are paid when people move, not when they stay, so a stable team is bad for their business. Here is how the model really works, the fees, the tricks, and how to use an agency without getting fleeced.
The most important skill in business and life
Many skills matter for success. But the one that separates the best leaders from the rest, especially in the age of AI, is the ability to make good decisions when nobody knows what happens next.
The most powerful yet overlooked tool in a leader's arsenal
Gallup tracked 3,400 employees over two years. Those who received quality recognition were 45% less likely to leave. The tool that produced this result costs nothing and takes ten seconds.
Does your business need a CTO?
The answer is almost always yes, but not for the reasons most people think. The right technology leadership pays for itself many times over. Here's how to think about it.
Fractional CTO. Is outsourced technology leadership right for you?
Fractional CTO engagements give you senior technology leadership without the full-time cost. Here's how to structure one that actually delivers.
The hidden conflict of interest in hiring a fractional CTO
A fractional CTO supplied by an agency has two employers: you, and the firm that pays them. That is a conflict of interest. Here is how to spot it, how to spot a fake CTO, and how to hire technology leadership that actually serves you.
Fractional CTO or AI consultancy? Don't hire the consultancy first
An AI consultancy delivers a project and leaves. A fractional CTO owns the outcome. They do opposite jobs, and hiring them in the wrong order is how AI projects become expensive, unowned messes. The honest UK answer.
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