A.I.
What Ableton taught us about AI and the future of coding
In 2001, Ableton turned bedroom producers into festival headliners. Now vibe coding is doing the same for software. The parallels run deeper than you'd think.
Creative Business
Lessons from starting things that worked, flopped, and taught more than any MBA. The messy reality of building creative ventures - decisions, mindsets, and the bits nobody warns you about.
I've started things that worked, things that flopped, and things that taught me more than any MBA could. These pieces are about the messy reality of building creative ventures - the decisions, the mindsets, and the bits nobody warns you about.
Start Here
The essential reads on creative business
Best of...
Making it in America: What international founders & creatives actually need to know
The cultural paradoxes, identity costs, and hidden rules nobody explains
Best of...
The Creative Technologist comeback
How a misunderstood role from the digital agency era is becoming essential for the AI age
Best of...
The McCartney Method: Mastering the Magic of Audience Connection
Paul McCartney’s secret to staying timeless: meticulous details, unforgettable fan moments, and a generosity that creates magic every show.
Best of...
7 ways to improve a conference speaking proposal
I’ve just finished evaluating proposals for SXSW 2025. Here are 7 things that separate the standouts from the rest.
Best of...
5 Founder Types
Which one are you?
How-To Guides
Practical playbooks for building your business
Creative Business
How to run a retrospective that actually works
Six months after a project you can barely remember what you learned. Here's a one-hour framework that fixes that - using conversation, transcription, and AI to capture the insights that usually vanish.
How-To Guides
What I've learned from evaluating 1000+ SXSW proposals
Every year, I find myself deep in proposal evaluation mode. Fortune 100 CEOs, ambitious VPs, indie strategists, even actors and
Future Of Work
An antidote to AI tinnitus
Sam Altman says agency and adaptability will be extremely valuable. But what does cultivating them actually look like?
Creative Business
Lemon automation: How Chick-fil-A processes 20% of America's lemons... and what it means for your career
The unexpected career insights hidden in a chicken restaurant's remarkable lemon-squeezing operation
Best of...
The McCartney Method: Mastering the Magic of Audience Connection
Paul McCartney’s secret to staying timeless: meticulous details, unforgettable fan moments, and a generosity that creates magic every show.
Creative Business
Two ways to define 'Good Enough'
Ever found yourself endlessly tweaking a project, chasing that elusive perfection? Yeah, me too. But here's a thought.
Battle Scars
Hard-won lessons from entrepreneurial endeavours
Building something creative?
Join Groove Theory for weekly insights on learning, creativity, and building things that matter.
All Posts
Everything on creative business and entrepreneurship
Stage Left
Being Typecast
There’s an episode of Entourage where Ari takes Vince and the crew to an LA
Lakers basketball game. Courtside
Future Of Work
Demo Night
Taking my career building project Fondo out of the studio for the first time.
New York City’s Canal Street
Portfolio Career
Lowercase skills
You may be familiar with concepts like T-shaped or I-shaped people to help
simplify the way we think about skillsets
Portfolio Career
3 elements for making deals as a freelancer or consultant
Today my pal Tom came over to my place for lunch. [1]
Tom is a digital marketing & strategy consultant,
Mindsets & Growth
The Player-Manager’s dilemma
Each weekend thousands of teams play on pitches like this.
There are many different reasons to play, but some common
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Company Name* (required)
We see this all the time.
On event registrations, job applications, and the contact forms where we’re
encouraged to
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Shipping, Unshipping and the Creative Handbrake
It’s now happened more times than I care to remember.
That feeling.
The shame. Frustration. Even self-loathing.
The impotence
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Introducing Sustainable Foundations
As regular readers of this blog will know I’m very interested in the future of
work for people across
The Tension
Intensity or Technique? You choose
In New York City there are a host of fitness studios offering innovative takes
on a workout session.
One of
Mindsets & Growth
3 circles for managing control, influence, concern, and anxiety
A concept I came across earlier this Summer is that of 3 circles.
I first used it in a business
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Forcing Mechanisms
On Saturday my laptop gave up.
One too many times had the power cable been wrenched out unapologetically,
dozens of
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Jiu Jitsu, Influence, and Persuasion for creative businesses
This summer I’ve been working with Hyper Island as part of the program team
running the AMP NYC accelerator
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
How connected is your community?
I recently met someone running a daily newsletter focusing on news and trends in
his industry.
It’s been going
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Here's your perfect brief
One of the best books I read in my 20s was also one of the shortest.
It was by a
The Tension
Are you built for the big company? Take a tip from Ripley
I like synchronicity. Every so often I have a day where after meeting a few
different people, by sunset several
Future Of Work
Signal vs ability, illicit activities, and the future of work
This Twitter thread from Josh Wolfe caught my attention earlier this week.
> 1/ Here are some REALLY interesting findings
Podcast
Tickets Podcast: Next generation guestlists and Nordic innovation with Johan Ekelund (CEO, Keyflow)
On the guest list today is Johan Ekelund, CEO at Keyflow, a Stockholm based
startup helping event producers and venues
Podcast
Tickets Podcast: Debs Armstrong on bespoke experiential
On the guest list for today’s episode of Tickets is Debs Armstrong.
Debs is founder of Strong & Co,