AI Boom Thrives, Business Models Still Uncertain
Everyone in AI feels the same tension right now, but this piece finally names it clearly. The tech is real. The progress is real. The spending is real. The business models aren’t. Not yet. This is the best breakdown I’ve seen of why the AI boom looks unstoppable on the surface while the economics underneath are still searching for solid ground. If you’re building, investing, or even just watching this space, read this. https://lnkd.in/gFyBsuPa
Bold, Permissionless Ambition Drives Progress Before Safety
Every time I rewatch that old ad I feel the same spark. It reminds me that progress rarely starts with the polished plan. It starts with the person who refuses to wait for permission. The world treats people like that...
AI Generates Activity, Not True Momentum Without Human Judgment
Companies often confuse activity with momentum. AI produces activity by default. Momentum still requires judgment, courage, and coordination. Tools do not deliver those.
Every Analytics Tool Has Blind Spots—Find Yours
Web analytics in 2005 had a blind spot big enough to build a company on. That blind spot became Crazy Egg. The tools you rely on today have their own. Before heatmaps existed, the web felt like something you could...
Instant Heatmaps: Free, No‑Setup Website Insight
It has been almost three months since I became CEO of Crazy Egg. Last month we shipped Free Web Analytics. The month before that we shipped Free Website Surveys. Today we’re shipping something we invented twenty years ago and rebuilt...
Aggregated Click Data Masks True User Intent
In 2005, analytics tools delivered numbers that looked precise and stories that broke the moment you checked the page. That was when the direction of Crazy Egg became obvious. Back then every analytics product behaved the same way. If a page had...
Managers Steer Attention, Not Tasks—Focus Drives Success
Most managers think they are directing work. They are actually directing attention. Wherever the attention goes, the company follows. Most drift starts as scattered attention, not bad strategy.
High Agency Means Testing Ideas, Not Just Acting Fast
High agency is often mistaken for speed. People assume it belongs to the ones who decide quickly and move without hesitation. That version looks impressive, but it is not what actually drives results. The real marker of high agency is quieter....
Align Story, Trust, and Media for Founder Brand Growth
Every great founder brand lives at the intersection of three forces: 1. Storytelling creates understanding. 2. Founder branding creates trust. 3. New media creates distribution. When those three align, everything compounds. Every launch, every post, every interview reinforces the same...
20 Years of Revealing What Users Actually Do
Crazy Egg turns twenty this month. The part that stayed constant is simple. We set out to show what users actually do on a web page, and that view changed how people built. We’ve been working on something that brings that feeling...
Small Interactions Reveal Team Values, AI Amplifies Them
You can measure a team’s values in the smallest interactions. The wording. The timing. The defaults. AI just amplifies those choices.
AI Exposes Fake Expertise, Rewards Real Thinking
The myth is that AI replaces expertise. The truth is that it punishes fake expertise. It reveals who was guessing and who was actually thinking.
Founders' Tension Ripple: Emotional Contagion Shapes Company Strategy
Most founders underestimate how much emotional contagion they create. A single moment of tension in you can ripple through the company as if it were strategy.
Investors Backing Flimsy Charts Signal a Looming Bubble
If this is the type of charts that investors are putting money behind, we’re in a bubble.
Momentum Grows From Honest, Small Decisions, Not Inspiration
Momentum shows up when the work is honest, the priorities are real, and the inner negotiation with comfort finally ends. It appears in the smallest choices. A draft released before it feels perfect. A difficult call handled instead of postponed....
Clarity Beats Fear
The market rarely punishes mistakes. It punishes slowness. Fear creates slowness. Clarity eliminates fear.
Separate Judgment From Routine to Reclaim Time
AI reveals the difference between work that needs judgment and work that just needs motion. The teams that separate the two gain time. The ones that mix them drown in noise.
Right Hire Eliminates Need for Rigid Processes
The wrong hire forces you to create process. The right hire reduces the need for it.
AI Masks Interview Gaps, Reveals Outdated Hiring Metrics
AI helps candidates answer questions they do not fully understand. For a while this makes everyone look stronger. Then it forces companies to confront how little their old signals ever measured in the first place.
AI Masks True Talent, Turning Hiring Into Stagecraft
Hiring used to break because companies moved too slowly. Now it breaks because candidates move too fast. AI gave every applicant the ability to look qualified before they have proved anything. Resumes are AI-polished. Writing samples are AI-written. Coding tests...
Tighten Feedback Loops, Not Features, to Unlock Growth
Most companies try to grow by adding more things. The real unlock usually comes from tightening the loop that already exists. When the feedback gets sharp enough, even old products feel new again.
180 AI Design Prompts Tested: What Actually Works
We ran 180 AI web design prompts through the top builders to see what actually ships and what falls apart. https://t.co/U0PVzCAy0C
AI Mirrors Your Thought Clarity, Not Randomness
When you work with AI, the output is never random. It’s a mirror held up to how clearly you think. Every response is a reflection of your own edges and blind spots. The model doesn’t create ideas. It digs through your...
Structured Prompts Unlock AI’s Web Design Potential
We ran 180 AI web design prompts to see what actually works. Everyone says these tools can design full websites in minutes. I wanted to see if that was true. Across Base 44, Bolt, Figma Make, and Lovable, we tested every...
Avoid Vibe‑based Hiring when Scaling Rapidly
When you’re scaling fast, hiring people based on vibes is the worst thing you can do.
New Funding Raises Expectations, Work Never Stops
PSA for Startups: Every new funding round raises the bar for your outcome. That’s why the news mostly excites investors. They just got a markup or won the deal. For everyone on the team, it’s a reminder that expectations just went...
Slack Shifted Email From Core to Peripheral Collaboration Tool
Slack didn’t kill email. It made it much less relevant and useful for internal company collaboration.
Netflix Faces Blockbuster‑style Disruption Amid Rising Costs
We all know what happened to Blockbuster. Netflix came along and disrupted the industry. In a crazy twist, Netflix might experience the same fate. Even with 250M subscribers, its past dominance can’t hide the cracks. $100B spent on content, rising competition, and scrappy AI...
Learning Is a Team's Sole Sustainable Competitive Edge
A team’s capacity to learn is its only sustainable competitive advantage.
Prioritize User Feedback; Your Opinion Is Just Noise
People often ask for my opinion on their product as if I’m the target user. I always ask them the same question: What do your users think? Your users’ opinions are data. Mine is a distraction.
Leaders Must Empathize Directly, Not Just Through Reports
If you’re an operator and understand this, you’ll get so much further than if you ignore it. The empathy you develop for the team and what they deal with day to day is priceless. As a CEO, don’t outsource that understanding to...
Startup Saturation Limits Visibility for New Ventures
Too many startups, not enough attention to spread.
Great Code Can't Save a Product without Market Demand
When I moved to the Bay Area in 2007, everyone wanted to go viral. Growth was the dream. Marketing was decoration. People believed great products sold themselves. That idea wasn’t new. HP’s founders said the same in the 1950s. They thought marketing...
Embrace Weird Ideas to Spark Innovation
The ideas we dismiss as odd or fringe are often the ones that can break us out of stagnation. Most weird ideas won't pan out, or the timing won't be right to execute on them, but the act of exploring...
Choosing the Right Term for AI-Driven SEO
AEO vs. GEO vs. AI SEO Optimizing content for AI-driven platforms has become incredibly complicated. There is currently no consensus on what to call what used to be "SEO." This article explains three main terms marketers use, all of which are...
AI Floods Ideas; Human Editors Shape the Future
An AI can draft fifty options before lunch. The skill is knowing which one moves the needle. In creative fields, that means taste. In business, it means prioritization. In science, it means designing the right question before running the experiment. AI pushes volume to infinity....
College Students Are the First AI‑Native Workforce
College students are the world’s first AI-native workforce. They just haven’t entered payroll yet. Surveys already show over 90% of college students have used generative AI for coursework. Prompts are the start of collaboration. They’ve stopped outsourcing tasks. They’re co-authoring ideas. Every assignment...
Clarity, Not Headcount, Drives True Founder Leverage
Most founders think leverage comes from headcount. It comes from clarity.
Debunking AI Marketing Myths to Overcome Algorithm Aversion
Using AI to generate marketing assets is becoming the norm, but it creates a challenge called algorithm aversion. Even if the content is high quality, consumers devalue or distrust content they believe was produced by AI. Here are the three...
Treat Attention Like Capital: Manage It Rigorously
Attention is the real balance sheet. Most companies know where the money went. Few can say where the attention went. Yet that’s what decides everything. Every company budgets for headcount and spend. Almost none budget for attention. It feels infinite, so...
Who Bears Responsibility for Widespread AI Sloppiness?
If AI slop keeps spreading, who’s most responsible?
Speed Over Discernment Turns AI Into Empty Waste
Today’s AI slop was yesterday’s food. Before algorithms ate our words, farmers fed leftovers to pigs. It was a closed loop. What people couldn’t use became nourishment for something else. Nothing was wasted because nothing could be. Then industry found shortcuts. Distillers...
TalkStories Lets Founders Grow Audiences by Speaking Daily
A few months ago, @MrWillNelson had a simple idea: What if founders could grow their audience on social media just by talking? That idea became TalkStories, a tool that calls you daily, captures your insights, and turns them into posts. I’ve used the...
Tech's Marketing Gap: Trust, Not Tactics, Is Missing
I’ve been working on an article about why tech still misunderstands marketing. The deeper I go, the less it feels like a problem of tactics. It feels like a problem of trust between what teams build and what customers believe. Marketers who’ve worked...
Founders Quickly Become the Bottleneck, Not the Visionary
I have a long-running list of these surprises for first-time Founders and CEOs. Here are a few that weren’t on Brian’s list. 1. Your calendar becomes everyone else’s calendar. Every gap gets filled. 2. The hardest conversations are never on the calendar....
ChatGPT Handles File Unzipping, Claude Does Not
ChatGPT can unzip files, Claude cannot.
Ask if Users Will Abandon ChatGPT Before Building AI Product
Before you build your AI product, ask one question: would anyone switch from ChatGPT for this? https://t.co/5q8pqdKadg
Attention Compounds First; Revenue Follows Later
Attention is the only metric that compounds before revenue.
MarTech and ProductTech Aren't
MarTech and ProductTech are not the same thing, not even close. Had to explain this to a founder today who was insisting that event driven analytics is all you need. Guess what? They have never tried to do any marketing.
Product Strategy: Disciplined Building Driven by Customer Context
Building because you can is easy. Building because you should takes discipline. That discipline is called product strategy and it runs on customer context.