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
Positioning
The Question: 'So, what do you do?'
A Thursday afternoon as the summer blinked into view. The two of us pulled up a
pair of high seats
The Tension
Overwhelm, Skateboards, and a new podcast
When we see a top performer in action they can seem to be floating on air.
They’re able to
Stage Left
The Secret
Tony Gilroy is one of the world’s most revered screenwriters.
He’s written movies as successful, and as diverse,
Learning, Education & Growth
The Educator in Residence
Why a different type of EIR could be your firm’s new secret weapon
In 1989, the Hollywood talent agency
Mindsets & Growth
Talking to Humans: Go anonymous
> “praise by name, criticize by category.”
Warren Buffett
Or to put it another way: Praise Specifically, Criticize Generally
>
Best of...
Learnings from the other side of an accelerator program
In the Spring of 2018, I was approached about collaborating on a new project
being presented by New York City’
Stage Left
The Educator’s End Credits
They don’t exist right now.
Of course, there’s the bibliography for a book or research paper, but as
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
No Reply = No Interest?
Next week marks the 31st edition of my monthly email newsletter which I started
in late 2015.
As you’ve
Portfolio Career
Work labels: word salad and connotations
A couple of weeks ago I had a drink with someone who’s done some great work in
their field.
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Switching to Annual View
Whether we’re coming fresh out of a salaried role or have spent years out on the
road as an
Creative Business
Two types of role model
When we think about role models, the person or persona we aspire to emulate, our
minds will usually go to
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Positioning: Get Uncomfortably Narrow
A lot of entrepreneurs and freelancers struggle with positioning.
Often it’s ironic as the work many of us do
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Sampling: You don’t know it until you’ve tried it
Why the Hitchhiker’s 3 rules of technology reactions permeate far further
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Dominant Design
When the car company uses dominant design, they may not even know they’re doing
so.
When they see the
Mindsets & Growth
The perils of a chain reaction
Our well-intentioned but misguided desires to root for the independents.
A couple of times a week I’ll walk with
Stage Left
22,000 songs in your pocket
Back in 2001, Apple CEO Steve Jobs uttered his now legendary one line pitch for
a new product his company
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Freelancer to Entrepreneur: The Forest, The Mountains, and the Water
Imagine a landscape. It has a forest on one side and a mountain range on the
other. The two are
The Tension
Labels In, Labels Out
We’ve always had labels in one way or another.
First, the label tended to be the same as the