Latest Essays

Signals, stories, and the forces shaping the world

  • Making it up, changing my mind, and learning to COPE with AI

    Making it up, changing my mind, and learning to COPE with AI

    AI’s effect on your job is still anyone’s guess. The practical response is getting good at directing it, and COPE gives you a framework for doing exactly that.

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  • We are all going to have to become engineers

    We are all going to have to become engineers

    What tinkering with agents at home taught me about deploying them at work

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  • America – A Wider England

    America – A Wider England

    An eyewateringly large dinner, a business class seat that doesn’t recline, and a NASA engineer who changed history with a nine-page memo. First impressions of America at forty-five.

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  • Strategies and Tools for Coping in the Agentic Age

    Strategies and Tools for Coping in the Agentic Age

    The bottleneck used to be information overload. Now AI handles the mechanical work — and the real challenge is knowing what to pay attention to.

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  • China – Singapore at Scale

    China – Singapore at Scale

    Perfect highways, better consumer products than the West, and a surveillance state that makes it all feel slightly too clean. Notes on a country that builds while others deliberate.

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  • India – Not Bad

    India – Not Bad

    Ten days driving cross-country from Delhi to Udaipur. Traffic as a contact sport, English better than yours, and a country that oscillates between boundless energy and voluntary chaos.

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  • The 80/20 Business

    The 80/20 Business

    Notes from Richard Koch’s ‘The 80/20 Principle’ on finding where you actually make money, focusing on the 20% of customers providing 80% of profit, and eliminating the rest.

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  • The Unbalanced Universe

    The Unbalanced Universe

    A strategic guide to the 80/20 Principle and the nature of unequal results. Visual notes from the book the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

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  • The End of the Nvidia Tax

    The End of the Nvidia Tax

    AI’s cost base is beginning to shift. Gemini 3 and Anthropic’s move to TPUs show that state-of-the-art models no longer require Nvidia hardware.

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  • What I love and hate about Crypto in 2025 (in Memes)

    What I love and hate about Crypto in 2025 (in Memes)

    A meandering, self-serving reflection on the state of crypto in 2025 — from the 2017 ICO bubble through DeFi summer, FTX fraud, and the Black Friday 2025 crash. Part analysis, part therapy, all memes.

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  • The Multi‑Trillion Dollar AI Compute Bet

    The Multi‑Trillion Dollar AI Compute Bet

    Big tech are making a huge bet on AI Compute. Whether this pays off is the key investment question of 2025.

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  • On Trump’s Tariffs

    On Trump’s Tariffs

    Economists and Businessmen invoke Ricardo – trade should flow where it’s cheapest. But look closer, and most countries don’t play by the free trade rules they advocate.

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  • Following the money in AI

    Following the money in AI

    Learnings from five podcasts featuring Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella and others in early 2025

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  • The Three Grid Concept

    The Three Grid Concept

    An outline of Micky Malka’s Three Grid Concept, with implications and visuals

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  • The Electricity Economy

    The Electricity Economy

    Why Electricity is the New Battleground for Global Competitiveness

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  • AI Stack Economics

    AI Stack Economics

    Exploring the AI value stack: From compute hardware to end-users, where will the greatest value accrue in this evolving landscape?

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  • The Future of Marketplaces

    The Future of Marketplaces

    Unpacking the rise and fall of 2-sided marketplaces: A look at the network effects that fueled their growth—and the challenges unraveling their value in a post-free-money era.

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  • The Star Principle & making better investment decisions

    The Star Principle & making better investment decisions

    Takeaways from the book the Star Principle by Richard Koch in which he shares the secrets of his success – and shows how you too can identify and enrich yourself from ‘Stars’.

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  • Navigating inaccurate data & misleading narratives

    Navigating inaccurate data & misleading narratives

    Deciphering Truths: Navigating Through the Maze of Inaccurate Data and Misleading Narratives.

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  • State > Story > Strategy

    State > Story > Strategy

    How to master your mindset and get productive with the State > Story > Strategy mental model.

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