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
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All Posts
Everything on creative business and entrepreneurship
Independent Paths
The unspoken layoffs
The thing no one talks about when it comes to layoffs.
Startups
3 learnings from validating a new startup idea
A trio of counter-intuitive learnings from the early stages of sculpting a new venture
Startups
Our new approach to startup validation
Einstein said if he had an hour to solve a challenge he’d spend 55 minutes on the problem, 5
Creative Business
Damon Albarn's preset genius
All killer, no filler. From 1981.
Creative Business
How to do Deeper Work
How to do more with less? Or rather, how can you create valuable work with less resources but also less burnout, stress and distractions?
Creative Business
#SceneRemix
It's only February, but this is the coolest thing I’ve seen so far this year. It blends
Innovation
2024's acquisition of the year
The calendar unlock - and why it's another alarm bell for Google
Creative Business
Word of the year
Why this year will go one of two ways. And it doesn't need to get Ugly.
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
The Failure Reel: 2023
My top 10 fails of 2023
Culture & Insights
Hollywood Hits Madison Avenue: When Ovitz & the Polar Bears Stole Coca-Cola
October, 1991. Hollywood's kingmaker, Michael Ovitz, craved a new conquest: brands. But not just any brand. He eyed
Creative Business
Scarlett Johansson in 'Her' is moving from fiction to reality
Scarlett Johansson’s character in the movie ‘Her’ is about to get very real. You can now create your own
Creative Business
A.I. and the creative industries' five stages of grief
Last week I whipped up a quick LinkedIn post featuring a spec Adidas ad someone made using AI. It got
Creative Business
A long-form interview with Richie Hawtin
As regular readers will know, I've been deep into electronic music since I was a teenager. I often
Creative Business
The bootleg Adidas ad
Here’s the new Adidas commercial. While it’s not the greatest advert I’ve ever seen, it was produced
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Confessions of a middle-class startup founder
In a world that idolises the billionaires and the big winners, it’s easy to forget there are multiple paths
Creative Business
What business are you in?
This is a good question to ask yourself on a regular basis. Two reasons why:
1) You're probably
Creative Business
The perils of Audience Capture
If you’ve ever posted on any social media platform, you run the risk of Audience Capture. But this is
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Tour de Freedom
By 2016, Mark Cavendish had won 30 stages of the Tour de France. It was extraordinary. Most pro cyclists go