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.
Companies Often Rebuild AI Evaluation Tools After Buying Faulty Ones
"We're building out our own AI evals tool because the one we bought doesn't work at all." Not the first time I've heard this.
Founders Must Evolve: Your Next Self Is Overdue
The hardest part of being a founder is realizing the next version of you is already overdue.
Document Customer Pain Points: Your Blueprint for Success
When the customer tells you what hurts, write it down. That’s your roadmap.
Each Computing Leap Redefines How We Express Intent
Every leap in computing begins with a new way to express intent. In the beginning, we spoke in commands. The first computers waited for precision. Each keystroke was an instruction carved into syntax. The interface was obedience itself. We learned to think...
True Progress Feels Like Doubt, Not Applause
Progress is easy to fake. You stay busy. You launch things. You talk about traction. Everyone claps because motion looks like momentum. The team feels alive. The investors nod. But the market is silent. Real progress feels different. It feels like doubt....
Introducing the Future Name for AI-Powered Software
Writing about where AI-powered software is going and I’ve come up with a new name for what we’re all going to end up building. Essay coming later today.
AI Multiplies Impact; Quality Data Determines Success
AI is a multiplier, not a miracle. Your data makes or breaks it.
AI Tools Shift From Research to Infrastructure when Delivering Value
If an AI tool creates motion without movement, it’s research. When it compresses a release cycle, trims spend, or expands revenue, it becomes infrastructure.
Software Is Shifting From Commands to Intent-Driven Collaboration
“Sora for Apps” For twenty years, software optimized what we clicked. Now it’s learning what we meant. We’re moving from tools that wait for instruction to systems that understand intent. The shift runs deeper than product design. It rewires the feedback loop...
Great Product Doesn’t Guarantee Business
The biggest myth in tech is that great product automatically builds a great business.
AI Tools Now Learn From Creators, Fueling a Creative Loop
For a decade, creation meant learning the tools. Now the tools are beginning to learn from the creators. As @billpeeb, who leads Sora at OpenAI, put it: “Seventy percent of our users are creating content even to this day, a week and a...
Great Products Begin as Toys, Evolve Into Infrastructure
This single statement explains every great consumer product ever made: They all start as toys. Every breakout product follows the same path: Want → Need → Utility. It begins as novelty. It becomes habit. It ends as infrastructure. Once you see that curve, you start to notice...
Software Awakens: Real‑time Learning Revives Innovation
Software is waking up again. Ten years ago, apps were the frontier. Screens were canvases. Curiosity was the culture. Then the App Store froze. The same grids, the same playbooks and the same incentives repeated endlessly. We optimized everything except imagination. For a while,...
Wabi Revives Playful Discovery in Modern Software
Every few years, something quietly rewrites the rules of how we interact with technology. You don’t always see it when it starts. It begins as something playful. Something that feels small, even strange. But it carries an energy you can’t quite...
Curiosity Fuels the Next Generation Operating System
The next operating system grows from curiosity. What feels like a toy today becomes the foundation of tomorrow. Wabi feels light, even whimsical, but that is how big shifts always begin. The first computers were for hobbyists. The first social...
Finally, the Long‑awaited Feature Lands in ChatGPT
I've been patiently waiting for this in ChatGPT for what feels like a decade now. https://t.co/LSMc1VpOvh
Free, Unified Dashboard: Introducing Crazy Egg Web Analytics
We just launched Crazy Egg Web Analytics. Clarity in one dashboard. Free forever. https://t.co/SKfnnQnTtF
Free Web Analytics Simplifies Understanding Your Site
It’s been almost two months since I became CEO of Crazy Egg. Last month we shipped Free Website Surveys. Tonight we’re shipping Free Web Analytics. And I can’t wait to show you what we’re shipping next month. We’re moving fast, but with purpose. Everything...
Transparency in AI Builds Trust Through Visible Thinking
When people trust humans, they trust intent. When they trust AI, they trust transparency. The best AI agent interfaces will reveal complexity with clarity. A good experience helps people see how an agent thinks, not just what it does. That’s how confidence...
Self‑Driving SaaS: The Future SaaS Junkies Anticipated
“Self-driving SaaS” @karrisaarinen has put into words what some of us SaaS junkies have been ranting to each other about privately.
Feature Bloat Dilutes Focus, Turns Users Into Habit
Somewhere along the way, growth stopped meaning progress and started meaning more. More features. More dashboards. More categories to chase. Every successful product faces this moment. You build something people love. It works. Then comes the temptation to widen the story....
Ease Over Features: Treat Focus as a Feature
Users don’t remember how much you can do. They remember how easy it was to do the thing they came for. Focus is a feature. Treat it like one.
Ship Often; Each Release Sharpens Your Judgment
The more often you ship, the stronger your judgment gets. Every release is a rep. You learn how your instincts hold up against reality. You get feedback while it still matters. Teams that wait to ship are really waiting to learn.
AI Development Demands Hypothesis‑First, Fast Iterative Launches
Every AI feature is a hypothesis, not a promise. That’s the biggest shift from SaaS to AI. In SaaS, you built toward predictability. You learned first, then launched because outcomes were deterministic. If you designed it right, it worked the same...
Too Many Options, No Strategy = Slow Startup Death
The startups that die slowest are the ones with the most options and no real strategy.
Create a Safe Environment so Talent Thrives without You
If you lead high performers, ask yourself one question this week: Would they still thrive here if I disappeared? If not, build the environment that makes their best work inevitable and then step back. Loyalty can’t be demanded. It’s a mirror of how...
When Rules Turn Into Walls, Innovation Stalls
When Rules Become Walls Every product starts with an idea that works so well it turns into a rule. The longer that rule holds, the harder it becomes to question. For Crazy Egg, the rule was simple: keep analytics honest and easy...
When Ideas Become Rules, Questioning Becomes Hard
Every product starts with an idea that works so well it turns into a rule. The longer that rule holds, the harder it becomes to question. For Crazy Egg, the rule was simple: keep analytics honest and easy to grasp....
AI Amplifies Bad Data—Clean Foundations First
Most teams dream of using AI to save them from complexity. The dashboards, the messy reports and the endless debates over numbers. Everyone wants a magic switch. The reality is less cinematic. AI doesn’t clean up the mess for you. It...
Real Traction Speaks: Customers Return, Pay, and Refer
Most founders waste time trying to look like they have traction. When traction’s real, you don’t need to choreograph it. It shows up when people return, pay again, and bring their friends. Customers end up doing the advertising for you.
Rethinking the Meaning of Personal AI
Thinking about the definition of “personal ai.”
Returning to Clarity: Rebuilding Analytics for Simplicity
When we first built Crazy Egg in 2005, we made a rule after watching people struggle with traditional analytics. Dashboards were cluttered. Reports were confusing. We wanted clarity so we focused on showing, not telling. That’s when we invented heatmaps for...
AI Races Ahead, Leaving Institutions and Users Scrambling
AI is moving faster than institutions, slower than expectations, and sideways to almost everyone’s plans. Enterprises are still debating “AI strategy” while startups ship new agents every week. Researchers are sprinting ahead while regulators write think pieces. And users? They’re experimenting in...
AI as Junior Pair‑Programmer Mirrors Engineer’s Iterative Loop
We've learned the same things as @maccaw points out in this thread about using AI to generate 100% of the code. The engineers at @CrazyEgg follow a similar process. They use AI like a junior pair-programmer. Fast, tireless, sometimes wrong and always...
AI Success Lies in Resegmenting, Not Creating New Categories
Most AI products aren’t creating new categories. They’re resegmenting existing ones. Understanding the difference shapes everything about how you build, market, and scale. Resegmentation means taking a job people already understand and making it faster, clearer, or more accessible. Category creation means...
AI Products Mostly Re‑segment Existing Markets, Not Create New Ones
Most AI products are not creating new categories as much as they are resegmenting existing ones. The distinction is critical for a team to understand. These lessons have been learned over and over again by many of us.
Unlock Existing ChatGPT Auth, Not New Sign‑In Layer
Huge if true. Wrote a bunch about the Sign in with ChatGPT opportunity back in April. “Today, there’s no secure way to link a ChatGPT account to another tool. No OAuth. No scoped tokens. No way to persist context responsibly. What’s needed...