The AI Moment
10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution. 10 times faster.
— Demis Hassabis · CEO, Google DeepMind · Nobel Prize, 2024
Every other week. One company. One AI bet.
The story behind it — told by the operator who made the call.
Issue 010 · Just shipped · 14 min read
Every Kinsale Employee Has an AI License. The Moat Was Built 15 Years Before.
Kinsale writes $1.6B a year in policies the rest of the insurance market refused. AI didn't build that moat — sixteen years of underwriting discipline did. The bots just enforce it.
Read the issueDon't miss the next one. One operator. Every other Wednesday.
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From the catalog
Three operators. Three industries. One discipline.
Issue 009 · May 5 · 15 min
Most CEOs Buy AI Licenses. WD-40 Bought Operating Margin.
Issue 008 · Apr 23 · 13 min
Randy Wood Is Turning a 70-Year-Old Sprinkler Company Into a Subscription Business — Because a Broken Gearbox in July Is a Farmer Who Doesn't Call in November
Issue 007 · Apr 9 · 12 min
The NYT Just Got Played. Here's the Part They Missed.
Five things this isn't
What you won't find in The Brief.
- × A daily AI news roundup.
- × The latest AI tools to try this week.
- × Vendor launches dressed as journalism.
- × Five things everyone needs to know about AI.
- × Predictions about 2030.
The library
Three places to fall in. None of them are a chatbot.
01
The Brief
One named operator. Every other Wednesday.
Long-form on what leaders of small-cap and mid-cap companies actually shipped — researched against earnings calls, 10-Ks, and named partnerships. Written for the operator who wants to know what worked before the consulting class catches up.
02
The AI Glossary
The operator's reference for every term that matters.
Every term explained twice — what it means technically, and what it means for how you run your business. Anchored to a named operator from the Brief, where the term is in production today.
03
The Failure Museum
Postmortems of AI projects that did not work.
Named companies. Root causes. What it cost them. The patterns that show up before a failure becomes public — and the decisions that could have prevented each one. IBM Watson Health. McDonald's drive-thru. Amazon recruiting.
"It requires a better type of mind to seek out and to support and create the new than to follow the worn paths of accepted success."
John D. Rockefeller · Random Reminiscences of Men and Events · 1909
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One operator. Every other Wednesday.
Real business leaders. Real AI deployments. Real numbers.
— including the parts that didn't work.
No daily emails.