Prose

AI & Transformation

Agentic Engineering: What It Actually Means

Most companies saying "agentic" have a prompt template calling an API. Real agentic engineering is agents that create, QC, and compete with other agents.

Context Engineering: The 95% Nobody Talks About

Context is the 95%. The prompt is the last 5%. Why the retrieval, assembly, and layering pipeline determines AI output quality.

The AI Readiness Scorecard That Most Companies Fail

A pre-qualification scorecard for AI transformation engagements that measures willingness to change, not technical readiness.

The Case for Three People and Ninety Days

Why a 3-person embedded pod outperforms a 12-person consulting team for AI transformation — and the 30/30/30 methodology that makes it work.

Enterprise AI: The Organizational Willingness Gap

Why the gap between AI demo and AI production isn't a technology problem -- it's an organizational willingness problem that most companies refuse to confront.

Systems Thinkers Are the Superpower

Systems thinkers with business background are the highest-leverage people in AI -- and the disadvantage they faced in narrative institutions is now their edge.

Real Estate & Mortgage

One Pipeline Pretending to Be Ten Businesses

The mortgage industry is cost-plus. Every intermediary doubles the margin. One pipeline treated as ten businesses costs homeowners $90 billion a year.

The Mortgage Value Chain, Part 1: Who Gets Paid and Why

Real estate agents, the MLS, the $31 billion data infrastructure tax, and the 6% commission structure that costs American homeowners $97 billion a year.

Mortgage Value Chain, Part 2: The Hidden Rate Tax

How mortgage broker commissions and lender gain-on-sale get buried in your interest rate instead of appearing on your closing statement.

The Mortgage Value Chain, Part 3: Servicing Is Just Billing

In any other industry, this would be called billing. Mortgage invented a $200B industry by renaming billing and wrapping it in compliance jargon.

Title Insurance: A $20 Billion Tax on Bad Infrastructure

How a 5% loss ratio industry survives on regulatory capture and fragmented property records

The Proptech Pivot: Workflow to Data Company

The predictable pattern of proptech companies pivoting from workflow automation to data intelligence -- and how to spot it early.

Projects & Dabblings

What Changes When AI Remembers You

The gap between a stateless AI assistant and a persistent thinking partner changes how you make decisions, not just how you get answers.

Building a Personal RAG System in Three Iterations

18,000 chunks, sub-millisecond search, and three rewrites -- what building RAG over personal data teaches about retrieval at any scale.

Delaware Is a $40T Asset Manager Disguised as a State

The first state to operate like a SaaS platform already exists. It just doesn't know it yet.

Retros & Musings

The Cost-Plus Industry: A Mortgage Retrospective

Two million people make their living off the inefficiency. We just didn't think change was possible.

Being a Software CEO

Operating notes from six years as a software CEO -- people, architecture, customers, and the sequencing discipline that encodes founder judgment.

Why Decentralized Protocols Beat Startups

Why decentralized protocols solve problems that neither startups nor corporations can -- and why the advantage compounds.

Inside Mubadala and the Global Semiconductor Battle

Three years inside a sovereign wealth fund during the GlobalFoundries acquisition -- sovereign ambition, semiconductors, and the GPU road not taken.

Our Generation Has Bitcoin

Why the generational wealth formula shifted from leveraged assets to hard money -- and why buying Bitcoin is simple but culturally hard.