Writing
Essays
36 pieces on building, focus, leadership, and AI. Newest first. The 2025 onward work is where my current thinking lives.
01How I decide what an AI agent may do without asking meMy agents can do almost anything I can at a keyboard. Here is the line I draw on what they do alone, what still needs me, and why it moves.02The four questions I got after the IRI talkFour questions came back after my IEEE IRI 2026 talk: why not just use ChatGPT, how invariants differ from unit tests, and whether it is really reuse.03Software Supply Chain Security in Plain Terms: SLSA, Sigstore, and in-totoSLSA, Sigstore, and in-toto without the jargon: how to prove a deployed artifact is what it claims to be, and was built the way you expect.04Accenture is becoming IBM, and so is consultingAccenture beat earnings and hit a nine-year low the same day. I read it as the market re-rating the bodies-on-seats consulting model, not one quarter.05Fable and the Grid: On Talking About AI, and Quietly Building With ItNotes from a June where I spent 25 minutes telling US utilities how applied AI gets from pilot to production, then went home and built the next thing with it.06Eighteen years, then two in a row: RCB and the IPLRCB won the IPL again on May 31, back-to-back after eighteen years of winning nothing. On the encore, Kohli loyalty, and what the IPL became.07What we chose to patent, and why: inside ERPClaw and TailTestWe filed patents on two products and not the rest. What was novel enough to protect, how a small studio thinks about IP, and what a patent really buys you.08AI on top of fifty-year-old systems: what utilities taught meThe real frontier of enterprise AI is layering assistants onto legacy utility systems without ripping them out. Why that unglamorous work matters most.09How my co-founder and I actually split a companyTen years in, how Varun and I divide a company between a CEO and a CTO, where we overlap, and how we settle the arguments we cannot avoid.10What seven days of AI-assisted coding changed about how I buildI built a server tool in a week with an AI pair. The build was the easy part. What it permanently changed about how I scope, delegate, and review.11Why we build and run the AI we recommendI am a founder who ships, not an advisor with slides. Why AvanSaber runs the AI it sells, and what operating our own software actually teaches us.12I built a Laravel Forge alternative in 7 days with AII paid rent for two years on a tool I could build. So one December I gave myself seven days and an AI pair to make my own. Here is the honest version.13The deep-work ritual: how I structure my weekI run engineering, strategy and leadership across several products. My only sane response is a deep-work ritual I defend with real stubbornness.14Five rules for juggling multiple SaaS productsI run eight products with a team of fifteen. Not with dashboards, with five simple rules that survive contact with a real, overloaded week.15Work-life integration vs. balance: my philosophyBalance assumes two opposing weights and a virtuous person keeping them level. After a decade of running companies, I stopped believing in the scale.16Inbox zero is a myth. Inbox intentional is my reality.I chased inbox zero like it was a moral state, and produced almost nothing. Here is the messier, more useful habit I replaced it with.17How I use productive downtime to prevent burnoutThe most productive thing I did last year was a week of near-nothing. Why rest is an input to the work, not a reward for it, and how I structure it.18Beyond the hype: three technologies I am excited aboutThe louder a technology is hyped, the more wrong I tend to be about it. Three emerging technologies that survived my own skepticism, and why they last.19The best leadership lesson I ever learnedI learned it by getting it badly wrong during a scary week. Your team does not mirror what you say. It mirrors how you are, and managing that is the job.20My home-office tech stack: the gadgets I actually usePeople want a list of exciting gadgets. The honest one is short and boring: the few tools I use every day, and the expensive lessons left in the drawer.21The read-to-lead habit: five books that made me a better leaderThe worst leadership advice I ever read came from a leadership book. Why the books that actually made me a better leader were never about business at all.22Why I ask what is the why before any new projectOne question has killed more of my bad ideas than any plan or strategy session. Why I make every new project answer it clearly before we start building.23Mentorship is a two-way street: what young founders teach meI mentor younger founders and quietly get the better end of the deal. What they teach me that I could not learn any other way, and what I try to give back.24DeepSeek R1: the underdog that shook up the AI worldA model from a team nobody was watching broke the comfortable story that the AI race was already decided. Why the underdog mattered more than its scores.25The future of work, part 2: human creativity in an AI worldAs AI gets better at the mechanical parts of work, it does not make human creativity less valuable. It quietly makes it the main thing worth paying for.26The future of work, part 1: navigating a new realityThe future of work is not the vendor utopia or the headline apocalypse. It is a new reality to navigate carefully, by the people actually living it.27The funniest TV comedies since 2000I switch off with comedy that is actually funny, not clever or important. My opinionated take on the best TV comedy since 2000, and why funny is so hard.28Why Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia is TVs best comedyAn extreme position, defended sincerely: Its Always Sunny is the best comedy on television, and the cruelty that puts people off is exactly the point.29The social-media dopamine dilemmaSocial apps are engineered to hijack your attention with the same chemistry as a slot machine. Why willpower is the wrong tool, and what actually helps.30Five fun movies for your next movie nightSome nights you do not want a film that changes you, you want one that is reliably fun. A small defense of rewatchable, low-stakes movie nights.31ChatGPT plugins: AI steps out of the chat windowChatGPT plugins look like a small feature. They are a glimpse of where AI is heading: out of the chat window, into the world, doing rather than knowing.32Rebellion on Mars: what frontier sci-fi taught meThe Mars rebellion is one of sci-fis oldest stories. Underneath the spaceships, it is a builders story about earning the right to set your own terms.33Mens health in your 30s and 40s: skip the supplement hypeMost of what is sold to men my age about health is noise. The three boring things that beat the supplement aisle, and where the pills actually fit.34Five reasons the 70s might be humanitys best decadeA slightly ridiculous argument, made sincerely: the 1970s sat at a rare balance of modern tools and unclaimed attention that we have since optimized away.35Five underrated comedy TV shows worth findingThe comedies that were brilliant and never got their due. Why great shows get overlooked, and the quiet joy of rescuing one for a friend.36In defense of Sachin TendulkarThe oldest thing I ever published online, from 2007: a young man defending Sachin Tendulkar against his critics, grammar fixed and argument intact.