Don't Automate, Obliterate: The Second Reengineering Reaches Professional Services
AI is reengineering professional services as computers reengineered big companies in 1990, but now outsiders buy the firms. The coordination layer goes first, so insiders should hand it off on their…
You're a media company now. Sorry about that.
Stripe has a podcast. OpenAI bought a talk show. Wealthsimple runs one of the best business newsletters around. Here's what it means for your business.
What Is Leadership Coaching? And What It Isn’t
By Matteo Cassese. I help brilliant overthinkers lead. Leadership coaching is one to one work on your problems as a leader. The coach asks, you find your own answer. Nothing is taught. You find your…
Where in the world are the FY ’27 HRSA SAC NOFOs?
When my kids were young, they watched, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Now I must ask, where in the world are the 2027 HRSA SAC NOFOs? There was a time not that long ago when HRSA was a…
A hybrid human/AI newsroom example from Taiwan
This content is from In 30 Minutes Guides. Here’s an AI newsroom example from the news service I’m developing. The original version by the Tbot (translation bot) had a strange chart and…
Je condamne
Ou je me lance dans une carrière de chien de garde en freelance.
From producer to builder
Link: From Producer to Builder: My Journey as a Product Manager Through the Web — Sara Hicks Sara Hicks explains what a product manager is and how it’s changed over time, in the best articulation of…
I Built the Productivity Superapp I Always Wanted
Over the past year, I’ve wanted to learn how to build with the new generation of AI coding tools. I’ve spent most of my career working with engineers and product...
The Wizard of Oz Experiment Has a New Wizard: AI
The Wizard of Oz experiment has always been one of my favorite Lean Startup techniques.
Another Day of Pretending
The machine runs 24/7: writes the code, files the tickets, fixes the bugs, reviews the PRs, deploys, monitors, finds the leads, writes the outreach, reads the stats. The developer is resting, and…
Negotiation
Like many of you lately, AI has been on my mind a lot. I’ve experienced an insane productivity boost at work and have started to think deeper about how to have a well-rounded career that is not…
Should we not have come?
On a bright, sunny Thursday afternoon, I met my very first patient of attendinghood.I had just finished emergency medicine residency a week before (yay!!), and was supposed to have a little more time…
MindDump
Hey! Welcome to my Blog, I’m Kuber Mehta, founder of PolyThink Labs and previously TREAT (acq.) I like to build (& break) things across AI, technology, and whatever else catches ...
What Should a New Engineer’s First Production Change Prove?
Use a bounded first production change to demonstrate verification, supported release and recovery, and ownership rather than rewarding time-to-first-commit alone.
Existential dread, perhaps.
One of my employees thanked me for the free therapy session today. If only I was qualified. Being a software engineer in 2026 is a wild mix of emotions. So is being an engineering manager. Or so it…
On being unemployed
After writing about being laid off in April, I went almost five months without paid work. As I wrote in that post, I started with some severance. After that, I learned how to participate in…
New job
As I alluded to in my previous post, I've got a new job. I'm a research associate at Colorado State University, working at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). For the…
Building a knowledge-work harness: notes from GOSIM Shenzhen
A field report given at the GOSIM Shenzhen Agentic AI Summit: what happens when you take the coding harness idea into a job without a compiler, and why the gains stay with individuals until an…
Imposter Syndrome, again?
Imposter syndrome is crazy, but it can be a positive signal.
Hiring Your First Employee: 2026 Version
A company’s first hire sets the standard for everyone that comes after it. They can really mean the difference between success and failure. I’ve started a few companies, including Double (W24) and…
Launch Directories Are a Grift That Sells Nothing to People Who Have Nothing
I paid BetaList $39 to list my new side project. Within hours, five other launch directories had emailed me to ask for more money. By the next morning it was eight. Congratulations to me, I had been…
Book highlights: “Never Enough” by Andrew Wilkinson
Highlights on buying profitable businesses, building wealth, ambition, and the question of how much is enough.
Microsoft Teams is a red flag
Teams looks free because it comes in the bundle. The people paying for that choice are the ones stuck using it every day.
Building a Team From Zero: Incubate, Then Split
When a team runs out of room, the instinct is to make it bigger. Field notes from standing up a new integrations team: grow the next team inside the old one, then cut it loose with a clear boundary.
Hurrah! Membership is open!
Thriving with AI Membership is open. It starts with live office hours, @Work and @Home, and the first 100 members get founding perks.
Retirement Update
I have been retired now for several months, and thought it was a good time to reflect on how things have changed for me. When I started my retirement, I would start each day with a written list of…
We Need All the Disciplines
From where I sit, figuring out what to build, building it, and shipping it are all part of the art of making software. Many disciplines have emerged through the years to facilitate this work:…
Connecting Industrial Engineering, Informatics, Pragmatic Knowledge Management Systems
"In the hands of someone with no knowledge, they can produce clumsy, ugly, barely functional output, but in the hands of a skilled craftsman, they can product works of utility, beauty, and…
The Last Day
My last day at KO_OP.
Three Small Business Lessons from The Everywhere Millionaire
I finished The Everywhere Millionaire from economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick over the weekend. And while the book probably isn’t for everyone—it’s partly a book about tax and economic…
Interview with Sabrina Halper
“I have a really inherent natural tendency to want to connect with people and make them feel comfortable. I think the dark side of that is I realized you can become a chameleon that’s too adaptable.”
Everything I Did Instead of Starting My Side Hustle
On October 8th I gave myself thirty days to test a small idea: a digital store on Shopify selling Notion and Excel templates. The kind of thing I've been building for our own household anyway. Thirty…
Where I'm Heading - How My Offer Is Changing
In my time as a product coach, I’ve seen countless changes within our industry and ways of working—I don’t think I need to list them all here, but let’s just say that there have been many waves of…
How I write content nowadays
In this video, I walk through my real process for writing a Productrise blog post with AI, from idea to published article. The nuances and subtle interventions are KEY to making content that is…
PLM Adoption Challenges: Should We Question the Organization or the Architecture?
A seamless product context layer could make collaboration easier to adopt, starting with the work companies already do. I read... The post PLM Adoption Challenges: Should We Question the Organization…
I Made My Home Assistant AI Recipes Book Free. Here Is Why.
Home Assistant AI Recipes is a physical book of practical smart home AI projects. The book is free from me; readers cover real printing, handling, and shipping costs. Here is what is inside and why I…
A-Corps across America
It’s been a few months since our last update, but a lot has been happening. We’ve been on the road, making connections, and continuing to lay the groundwork for Artist Corporations.…
Note
Make something work before scaling. Figure out why it’s got friction. Be sure you understand the right solution. Do it again, make it painful. Then automate.
KYC with no data vs. KYC with too much data
I have worked on KYC and AML from two opposite ends. A few years ago, I helped build a digital […]
The Sprawl: Complexifying Contracts Through Negotiation
This image is from a public-company merger agreement. I highlighted those components that complexify contracts. Different levels of enumerated clauses. Cross-references. Parentheticals. Exceptions.…
Operate Like a Real Company Before You Feel Like One
The acquisition call rarely arrives on your timetable. Clean records, contracts, books, and security evidence keep diligence moving before delay and doubt kill the deal.
Moving dozens of teams without a mandate
Most cross-org initiatives die because the author writes a design doc, files tickets in other teams' backlogs, and complains to leadership when nobody prioritizes them.
The (Un)Knowable Future
My second workforce column for the AJR is up. Predictions are hard, especially about the future. The post The (Un)Knowable Future first appeared on Ben White.
cjr.org on Nicole Noren leaving ESPN over gambling
Nicole Noren: I'm not going to have blood on my hands. What troubles me most is the disconnect at the ESPN executive level between making money and caring about the human impact of constantly…
What a Fractional Amazon Advisor Actually Does (And Whether You Need One)
A fractional Amazon advisor provides strategic thinking and decision-making support, not day-to-day account management. This role works best for sellers hitting scaling plateaus or entering the…
The Godfather of DPM is having a moment
Madonna’s back. I’m on three project management recognition lists. Apparently, we’re both giving you reasons to pay attention again.Apparently, I’m an influencer now.…
Boosting Your Discoverability
Successful Fiction Writing = Creating + Organizing + Marketing I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Marketing. Our topic today is…
In a Room Full of Builders, Where Are the Architects?
Harness engineering is changing how software gets built, but our practices haven't kept up. After a year engineering without reading code and operating autonomous software factories, I've found the…
Faster, Better, Stronger is not a Strategy
This article defines what a platform strategy is or isn't and provides an opinion on how to write one.
Uneed - Behind the scenes #1
Products added to Uneed grew 7x in a year. Here's what slop actually looks like from the inside, and how I deal with it.