The AI-Native Founder
Essays
Long-form writing on building with AI as the operating system, staying intact while you do it, and the mechanics of getting from engineer to founder to funded.
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Building Your Founding Team — Lesson 7: Build the Track, Hand Over the Car
The Build Log · Why founders stall before the first hire, what agents changed about that, and the written handover that works for a person or an agent
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Sell the Promise, Then Build What Keeps It
A law firm that guarantees eight hours or the review is free, a runtime that makes agents finish what they start, and a small model for the routine calls. Plus the bill that taught me.
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Fundraising Fundamentals — Lesson 6: The Update Is the Next Round
The Build Log · What the money is for, and the monthly investor update that reports against last month’s promises instead of this month’s good news
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The Seed Money Is Buying Firms, Not Tools
A pre-seed audit firm, a debt-recovery agent that hands hardship to a human, and a $3.5B company selling expert-graded data. Where the week’s money says your product ends.
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Fundraising Fundamentals — Lesson 5: The Sixty Days After Yes
The Build Log · Why a signed term sheet is not money, what diligence is actually testing, and the data room that assembles itself while you keep shipping
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Somebody Is Writing Your Compliance Doc Right Now
Three labs started setting AI safety standards without waiting for permission, and a startup raised $40M to certify agents like SOC 2. Both land on your sales call.
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Fundraising Fundamentals — Lesson 4: The Term Sheet Is a Control Document
The Build Log · Why the valuation is the least interesting number on the page, the four clauses that decide who actually runs your company, and the diff agent that reads a term sheet against the publi
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Nobody Is Taking Your Word For It
Nvidia closed on Hugging Face, AI’s share of pre-seed dollars stopped rising, and what kills enterprise pilots is not the model. Three places where a claim now needs paperwork.
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Fundraising Fundamentals — Lesson 3: Inside the Room
The Build Log · What actually happens in a partner meeting, why your pitch is really a briefing for people who are not there, and the two agents that wrap every investor conversation
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The Week Your Stack Became a Counterparty
OpenAI is cutting Cursor off, a quarter-billion dollars went into agent security, and the scarcest input in AI is now a verified human. Every vendor in your stack has interests of its own.
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Fundraising Fundamentals — Lesson 2: The Pipeline Math Nobody Warns You About
The Build Log · Why rejection is structural, what the 2025 seed market did to your funnel, and the agent that builds your investor pipeline while you build the product
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Introducing The Build Log
Serialized startup-building courses for paid subscribers — a new lesson every week
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Fundraising Fundamentals — Lesson 1: Money Amplifies What’s Already There
The Build Log · The Quibi test, the SCORE framework, and the letter AI just rewrote
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Your Model Hub Has a New Landlord. Your Token Bill Has a New Floor.
Nvidia’s record quarter, OpenAI’s escape benchmarks, a reported $12.9 billion deal for Hugging Face, and $45 billion in power contracts all land in the same place. The inputs under your product are be
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Getting Your First 10 Customers — Part 4: Delivering Success & Scaling
The unreasonable first thirty days that turn ten customers into the next hundred, and how to write down what you learn so it compounds.
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Getting Your First 10 Customers — Part 3: Converting Conversations to Customers
How to run a first sales call where the other person does most of the talking, which is the version that ends with a customer.
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Getting Your First 10 Customers — Part 2: Outreach & First Contact
I cut a number from this course because it was off by a factor of ten. Here is what actually gets a stranger to reply in 2026.
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Getting Your First 10 Customers — Part 1: The Foundation
Why your first ten customers are a different species from every customer after them, and how to find the handful of people already in enough pain to say yes.
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Ship Into the Building: The Fastest Way to Build the Right Product
Building is cheap and synthetic validation is the trap. Deploying inside one real customer beats every simulated test an AI can run for you.
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Land, Harvest, Compound: The Forward-Deployed Framework for a Team of One
Land, Harvest, Compound — the forward-deployed framework for a team of one, and the harvest discipline that turns services work into a moat instead of an agency.