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?
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All Posts
Everything on creative business and entrepreneurship
Podcast
Under the Current Podcast: #7 - Georgina Wilson-Powell
building an ethical media business, creating support structures as a solo
founder, and recovering from failure
Listen now:
Anchor [https:
Podcast
Under the Current Podcast: #6 - Andrew Hutton
what emerges in early stage companies, discovering founder identities, and
launching and relaunching
Listen now:
Anchor [https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/
Innovation
A departure point for innovation
Comes from a very simple question: what are you sick of?
Podcast editing. Cookbooks getting splashed with olive oil. $50
How-To Guides
How I do Morning Pages
The theme of my most recent newsletter was New Wine, Old Oak
[https://howardgray.substack.com/p/adventures-49-new-wine-old-oak];
encouraging readers
Podcast
Under the Current Podcast: #2 - Luciana Rozenberg
going from prototype to products, form and function, and why big cities matter
Listen now:
Anchor [https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/
Podcast
Under the Current Podcast: #1 - Joey Cofone
the mirage of failure, recognising the spectrum of what’s difficult, and
alternative approaches to rebranding
Listen now:
Anchor [https:
The Tension
Free or full price
In 2010, a heavy metal kid suddenly took the dance music world by storm.
When Sonny Moore aka Skrillex broke
Battle Scars
Do you remember your first 10?
Every business starts somewhere. There are very few that got off the ground with
hundreds or thousands of customers rather
The Tension
The Rust
On Sunday I recorded the first episode for a new podcast series I’m producing.
The guest was someone I
Portfolio Career
Pareto in a pandemic
The theme of last month’s newsletter [https://howardgray.net/newsletter/] was
Dormant Ties. As the professor and author Herminia
Stage Left
The $15m unbranding
When Matthew McConnaughey decided to stop doing romantic comedies, he told his
agent, Jim Toth at CAA, to make sure
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
The Rough Edges
The photographer who infuses their biology degree into the art.
The fashion stylist who spent time as a national-level rower.
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
A slice of Saatchi
Here’s one way to get people talking about your brand – especially when you’re a
B2B services company.
Dubai’
How-To Guides
A simple recipe for working independently
It can be hard not to marvel at those productivity gurus; the creative mavens;
those extraordinary entrepreneurs. They’re so
In The Neighborhood
The Dollar Bill and The Golf Ball
My brother came to visit from Amsterdam for a couple of weeks; first a trip to
SXSW, before a week
Stage Left
Opening Credits
January signals the peak of Hollywood’s awards season.
It’s the time for recognition and credit: for the work
Coaching
Co-Founder Conflict: NFI?
I met up with my friend Gillian [https://www.linkedin.com/in/davisgillian]
yesterday.
Like me, she’s perhaps a
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Life’s a Pitch...but for who?
Over the last few months, I’ve been working with nearly two dozen founders from
across the spectrum of New