Operator's Memo
Product Leadership. AI. Growth. Building enduring technology companies.
Latest memo
Product Strategy
Crawl, Walk, Run Is Sometimes a Lie
Sequenced rollout works when phases share a mechanism and misleads when they don't, and most teams never check which case they're in.
Recent
Marketplaces
The Cap Can't Police Sponsor Deals
The Kawhi-Aspiration dispute shows salary-cap enforcement can't police a sponsorship market where the teams under scrutiny broker the deals.
Product Leadership
The Scarce Assets of Product Management
The PM outputs that survive AI drafting are the ones that require standing inside an organization, not the artifacts that compress cleanly.
Product Strategy
The Solo Operator Can't Afford Inference
Two arguments this site has made are in tension, and resolving it narrows the mom-and-pop SaaS thesis to low-token categories.
Product Strategy
Your Best R&D Lab Is Your Customer List
Firms that turn their customer base into a distributed research division find product-market fit faster than firms with better internal labs.
Marketplaces
NIL's Ownership Gap: Daniels vs. LSU
LSU's jersey fight with Jayden Daniels exposes a missing layer in the NIL marketplace: contracts for who owns a number after the athlete leaves.
Product Leadership
What Doesn't Compress
Every automation wave commoditizes the mechanical middle of a job and reprices the scarce coupled inputs — judgment, taste, context, trust.
Product Strategy
RAF Bet the Format, Not the Talent
Real American Freestyle only pays off if wrestling's rulebook was the ceiling, and the Fox Nation deal says the format bet is landing first.
Product Leadership
Writing PRDs when AI drafts them for free
AI made PRD drafting a commodity, so problem framing is now the only PM skill that matters.
Marketplaces
Marketplaces Still Work — the Liquidity Math Changed
AI has quietly rewritten marketplace unit economics, and match quality can be a moat again for the first time in a decade.