Weekly digest #72
We’ve hit personal agency hyperfinflation, Building AI products competitors can’t match, Forward deployed engineers
We (Matt and Shray) read hundreds of articles on company building, venture investing, and self-management and curate the best ones into a weekly digest to help founders and operators stay on the top of their game.
Better thinking
We’re in an AI bubble (11 minute watch)
It’s official, Bezos says so. We’re invariably in an AI bubble right now. Not a financial one but an industrial one. And yes, that means massive amounts of capital will be destroyed laying the foundations, just like the telecom era when companies and governments invested heavily in fiber-optics technologies. But, that doesn’t mean AI won’t lead to incredible impact. It likely will, we’re just going to see an ebb before that flow. We’ve seen this scene unfold before during the aftermath of the telecom era. Here’s a short clip of Bezos elaborating further during his interview with John Elkann, Ferrari’s Chairperson, at Italian Tech Week.
Money is freedom (4 minute read)
Arguably, and I really think it is up for debate, money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy security. A house, food, and your time. That’s what we all want, right? Safety and time. Time to pursue what we care about, with who we care about. If you really want to do it, you have to make the outcome measurable. It needs a bookend. An exact figure, and a pathway to get there. Be precise.
We’ve hit personal agency hyperfinflation (4 minute read)
The more tools we accumulate - apps, gadgets, platforms, AI copilots - the richer we feel in capability. But paradoxically, each new layer seems to make us weaker and more dependent. Adding tools can make you feel richer, more capable, and expeditious, but unless your underlying agency grows alongside - unless you actually strengthen your capacities - those tools get increasingly worthless. Eventually you have agency inflation. On paper, you’re a productivity powerhouse with twelve different systems. In practice, take away the tools and you’re stranded. If you can still function when the tools are gone, the tools serve you. If not, you serve them.
Operational tactics
Selling your new sales deck to sales (7 minute read)
This one is for marketers at larger companies. If you’re creating a sales deck, getting the whole team to use it is important. If your sales team doesn’t use the same deck, they end up pitching your company in different ways. Start by bringing them into the creation process early, treat the deck as one long discovery session (versus a storytelling one), and just like PR, get some champions on board to help you push it out once it’s live.
Things you’re allowed to do (9 minute read)
Here’s a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you weren’t, or didn’t even know you could. You’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones). All you need is agency.
Building AI products competitors can’t match (9 minute read)
Navigating the AI shift is opportunistically rich but fraught with with challenges for companies of all sizes. Today, AI products find themselves competing against fast-moving platform companies like Anthropic, established giants such as Microsoft, and well-funded startups. So how do you win? The anatomy of a winning product includes AI capabilities (pre-trained AI models), your data (customizes off-the-shelf AI capabilities for your product), and your functionality (determines how the AI behaves), connected to each other through context and orchestration layers. The power of this approach lies in creating combinations that competitors cannot easily replicate. Enroll in Ravi’s Reforge course if AI Strategy piques your interest (not sponsored).
Refer and we’ll send you our favorite books as a “thank you” for spreading the word.
Venture investing
Speculation nation (10 minute read)
Prediction markets, fueled by companies like Polymarket and Kalshi, are financializing everything. Politics, sports, music - all of it can now be bet on. Rex argues that younger generations are flocking to it. The corporate career ladder doesn’t look like an attractive way to make money. Job prospects are bleak. So everyone now wants to be an influencer or a prediction guru.
Capital and industry (10 minute read)
The contest to dominate the intelligence layer has narrowed to a handful of players, and at even greater levels of capital intensity. One of the fundamental question to ask is if there’s still enough air left in the room (capital and time) for a new challenger to emerge at the intelligence layer? On one side, tech incumbents are spending tens of billions of dollars per year on data centers. On the other, investors worldwide have poured over $100B collectively into AI labs, hoping to generate trillion-dollar outcomes. The takeaway for investors is that contenders at the foundation model layer are already set, and that no fresh pool of willing capital is likely to back another credible challenger, so the best way to ‘index’ the market is to make concentrated investments in the top public / private companies.
Circular financing: does Nvidia’s $110B bet echo the telecom bubble? (7 minute read)
When Nvidia announced a $100 billion investment commitment to OpenAI in September 2025, analysts immediately drew comparisons to the telecom bubble. The concern: is this vendor financing, where a supplier lends money to customers so they can buy the supplier’s products, a harbinger of another spectacular collapse? The similarities are striking , but the differences matter. Tomas Tunguz, founder and VC at Theory Ventures, breaks down how unlike the telecom bubble , where demand was speculative and customers burned cash, this new merry-go-round has paying riders.
Managing your career
Forward deployed engineers (5 minute read)
Forward deployed engineers (FDEs) are technical people or product creators who embed with their customers with the express purpose of learning their problem and solution space, so they can deliver the outcomes they need. The concept of FDEs is associated with Palantir and their core model of solving complex problems in domains like defense. Typically, FDEs build solutions for identified problems and supports the product organization in incorporating new capabilities identified in the field. Product discovery for AI agents is a current example of where this is important, and no wonder many startups are adopting the FDE model. Though you don’t need to follow the Palantirian approach for accelerating effective product creation, consider visiting the offices of your customers and meet directly with the users (more frequently).
How to do everything you want in your twenties (8 minute read)
If you refuse to settle for a life marked by complacency or a job that depletes your energy reserves to show up for yourself and others, here’s a piece for you. In your twenties and beyond, it’s easy to fall into lifestyles with little intention, and even if you begin to recognize discontentment or hedonistic escapes providing temporary pleasures, reflecting on what should change to get out of the rut rarely happens. Jay’s pyramid of lifestyle is a framework borne out of a desire to overcome corporate fatigue; by bringing the key elements of lifestyle into sharper focus so you can take back the reins and lead a nourishing life.
How to be agentic in the age of AI | Cate Hall (CEO of Astera) (71 minute listen)
Cate Hall is the CEO of Astera, a private foundation focused on AI risk and frontier technology. Before leading Astera, Cate’s unconventional career path took her from practicing law (including work on Supreme Court briefs) to becoming the world’s top-ranked female poker player in 2016. After overcoming personal struggles with addiction, she co-founded Alvea, a biotech company developing shelf-stable vaccines for pandemic response, before joining Astera. In this conversation, Cate shares insights on human psychology, agency as a learnable skill, and why she believes AI’s biggest risk may be a ‘soft takeover’ in which humans gradually lose independence and meaning.