In this post 1Two years, a few battle scars 2The line-shaft fallacy 3What gets sold vs. what actually happens 4The two costs nobody prices 5The five phases of an “agentification” journey 6The rushing tax 7A checklist worth answering before you fund the reallocation 8The first step is simpler (and cheaper) than you think Two years, … Read more
You would never take a stranger’s word for something that matters, not without checking who they are, what they are selling, and whether they have a reason to shade the truth. Yet you will open an AI assistant, ask it something that actually matters, and take the answer at face value. The machine is mostly … Read more
The actual job of a marketer at a festival like this isn’t just the meetings on your calendar. It’s getting better at the work itself. That means spending real time being inspired by the best people doing your job anywhere in the world, arguing about how you would have approached the same brief, and figuring … Read more
Big Tech: Revenue & profit per employee, 2018–2024 Productivity tells a different story than headcount alone. Toggle companies, switch between revenue and net income, or index everything to 2018 = 100 for a normalized comparison. METRIC Revenue / employee Net income / employee SCALE Absolute ($K) Indexed (2018 = 100) Interactive chart: Revenue and profit … Read more
There’s a lot of hype right now about agentic buying the idea that AI agents will soon buy from other agents, automating entire decisions on our behalf. In theory, your AI talks to my AI, they compare specs, negotiate price, and everyone saves time. That sounds efficient. But here’s the tension: buying, as well as … Read more