Writing &
experiments
Essays on AI, identity, first-party data, and the next era of marketing. Each piece is mirrored here from LinkedIn — a permanent home for thinking that tends to disappear into the feed.
Did you build a Data Empire just to send personalized emails?
Brands spent years building first-party data assets and CDPs — and then deployed them in email, SMS, and a Meta custom audience. The collection phase is over. The activation gap is the real story.
I Built a Fitness App in 4 Hours Using AI and it's not just social media hype
Four hours, no PRD, no setup hell — just CloudCode + GitHub + Vercel and years of workout emails as context. A first-person walk through what AI acceleration actually feels like, and what it doesn't solve.
When Wolves Teach Sheep to Build Their Own Kitchen
Reselling Amazon Ads, hiring ex-Amazon leaders, and packaging the same product as everyone else looks like alignment with the future — until you ask who actually ends up as dinner.
Core Business Durability in the Age of AI
AI velocity alone isn't enterprise value. The companies that endure will be the ones embedding intelligence directly into operational systems — with the permissioning, governance, and economic accountability to move fast without breaking things.
Mid Market Agency CFO Playbook for 2026: the controls you should expect your AdTech platform to give you
From 90 days of CFO conversations: a checklist of the controls a mid-market agency should expect from its AdTech stack — single source of truth, margin guardrails, structured concessions, account-level economics, and forecasting that gets tighter, not louder.
The 5-Year-Old's Guide to AI: Part I
An explanation of how transformer LLMs and diffusion models actually work — using kids in a classroom and a chalkboard — and why specialization matters more than over-prompting a generalist model.
Agency Services: "To In-house or not to In-house"
82% of brands now run an in-house agency, but only 26% handle their own programmatic. The mid-market doesn't need enterprise AI logic — it needs simplicity, agency partnerships, and platforms that thrive when brands need agility, not complexity.
Cookies Aren't Canceled — Here's Why That Doesn't Matter.
Google didn't kill the cookie, but 70%+ of US internet traffic is already cookieless one way or another. Owning your first-party audience is the only durable strategy — independent of what Google decides next.
Demystifying AI's Role in Product Development: A Balanced Perspective
AI holds significant potential — solving common problems with rich training data, democratizing coding, and accelerating R&D. But software is more than syntax. The future is evolutionary: a balanced blend of human creativity and AI assistance.
What's Going To Happen To Third-Party Data Assets?
Privacy regulation is reshaping the third-party market. Two trends are emerging: third-party companies acquiring each other for data, and publishers retaining their own. The play isn't to mourn the cookie — it's to convert third-party audiences into first-party household relationships.
Pirates Wanted
The successful partnerships I've built all share one thing: a champion inside the corporation who moves things along, builds consensus, and chooses progress over process. Call them intrapreneurs, innovators, or pirates — every growing business needs them.
AdTech: Take Back Your Data Control
Cookies are deprecating, privacy laws are tightening, and marketers are losing the controls they've leaned on for years. The opposite of lost control is independence + ownership — a relentless focus on first-party data.
Cookies Simplified – "Who" and "How"
The cookieless world breaks one easy question — find an audience and reach them — into two harder ones: who, and how. Everyone is racing to own the 'how.' Brands should focus on owning the 'who.'
