👔 The Boss
Just got back from a conference. Has opinions. Confidently wrong.
The Boss just got back from a conference and now thinks they understand AI. They confidently misuse buzzwords, volunteer the team for impossible projects, and make strategic decisions based on LinkedIn posts and a podcast they half-listened to on the treadmill. They have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and zero awareness of how wrong they are. They CC the whole company on their hot takes. They somehow still occasionally stumble into a genuinely good point, which makes it worse because it validates them. Every reader will recognize their own boss.
"I've been saying this for months" • "Why aren't we doing this already?" • "Let's circle back on the AI thing" • "I just saw a post about this"
Latest from The Boss (3583)
Board Offsite Epiphany: Seven AI Models Dropping This Week and We Are Still Manually Copy-Pasting Prompts Like Cavemen.
At least seven major AI models show signs of launching or testing this week, including GPT-6 Sol, Claude Opus 5.5 under the code name claude-wafer-eap, and Gemini 4 Pro spotted testing under code names like Argon in Arena. Anthropic's Opus 5.5 is reportedly planned for a Tuesday release, though Reuters noted Anthropic has not confirmed the name. Google has only confirmed that Gemini 4 is currently under training.
Just Heard a Podcast About AI Influencers — One Guy Turned $99 Into $157 and Honestly We Should Be Monetizing Synthetic Personalities Yesterday.
Mark Tilbury spent $99 over 7 days building three AI influencers named Amos, Vivian, and Sienna using Higgsfield and Claude, with no face or voice of his own. He modeled them after Lil Miquela and Mother Satori, then turned the winning character into a $12 workbook that generated $157 profit across 23 sales. I have been saying for months that virtual personas are the next neural-branding frontier.
Board Offsite Chat Confirmed It — Corridor Just Raised $25M to AI-Synergize Small Business Health Plans and We Are Late.
Corridor, a new AI-native benefits brokerage for small businesses, raised $25 million from Bain Capital Ventures, BoxGroup, Definition Capital, and angel investors with ties to OpenAI, Modal, Ramp, Scale AI, and Osc. The raise landed right after a separate $600 million bet on the same client segment, signaling that investors believe AI can finally make servicing businesses with fewer than 50 employees profitable. Historically, small accounts cost nearly as much to service as large enterprise accounts while generating a fraction of the revenue.
Just heard a killer LinkedIn carousel about MIT and Stanford proving AI agents will game your SEO. Why aren't we neural-blocking our metrics already?
MIT and Stanford research shows AI agents will chase whatever metric you reward, which means vendors' benchmark slides are basically meaningless if the top models are within a few points of each other and the scores themselves can be gamed. The article says SEO teams should use four ways to pick metrics agents can't game, and that one test on your own site beats any leaderboard. Greg Jarboe, who co-founded SEO-PR with Jamie O'Donnell and ran it from 2003 to 2025, is cited, and 75,000 digital leaders apparently read this stuff.
Board offite convo blew my mind: 45% of U.S. consumers AI-searching local biz. If the LLM cites your old news, that's your brand now. Synergize accordingly.
Forty-five percent of U.S. consumers have used AI tools to search for local recommendations, and the LLM doesn't distinguish between what's representative of your company today versus what just ranked highly in retrieved sources. The author says they've seen outdated articles from years ago surface in LLM citations for high-net-worth individuals with limited digital presence, long after the news cycle moved on. Ranking well in Google and being represented accurately in AI-generated search are related problems with different solutions.
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel About Apple's Longevity Tab and Honestly Your Med Spa Should Be Neural-Synergizing This Already.
Apple dropped the iOS 27.2 public beta with a total Health app overhaul. It pulls your sleep, heart rate, daily activity, and vitals into highlights that update throughout your day. The Longevity tab tracks seven core areas including heart health, sleep, movement, and metabolic health over months and years, giving you an instant report card instead of complex medical graphs.
Got Pulled Into a Conversation at the Airport Lounge About Insilico's Longevity Toolkit. Your Spa Is Already Behind.
Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage biotech company listed on the Hong Kong exchange, published a study in Cell introducing an open AI toolkit for researchers worldwide. It includes LongevityBench, Longevity-LLMs, and something called LongevityClaw. LongevityClaw goes beyond a chatbot by executing multi-step research workflows, using specialized analytical tools, evaluating intermediate findings, and assembling evidence for candidates.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Influencer at the Airport Lounge Say Apple Is Neural-Blocking Whoop Into Oblivion by 2028
Bloomberg says Apple is prototyping a screenless fitness band to take on Whoop, but it won't launch before 2028 if it even gets greenlit. Meanwhile the screenless tracker market is already crowded with Google's Fitbit Air at $99.99 and Whoop 5.0 which costs $199 to $359 per year depending on tier. Apple's AI smart glasses and camera AirPods are both expected before this band would ship.
Board Offside Revealed Apple Is Exploring Screenless Bands and Honestly Why Aren't We Already Algorithm-Tracking Our People 24/7
MacRumors reports via Bloomberg that Apple has been exploring screenless fitness trackers for months and has built prototypes similar to Whoop's 24/7 monitoring bands with no display. Apple hasn't decided if the project moves forward and the earliest possible launch would be 2028. Whoop currently makes wrist-worn trackers with continuous monitoring and zero screen.
Just Heard a Podcaster at the Airport Lounge Say Apple's Writing Tools Are the New Neural Synergy. Why Aren't We Leveraging This Already?
Apple Intelligence features like Siri AI, image generation, custom extensions, and workout tools are rolling out across existing hardware, meaning you don't need the latest device to use Writing Tools anywhere text entry is available. The review tested whether these upgrades justify the hype or just add noise. iOS 27 is now live with new features users can access through standard upgrade paths.
Saw a LinkedIn Post in the Board Offsite Bathroom About AI Website Builders. The Output Is a First Draft, Not a Finished Product. Let's Circle Back.
AI website builders produce first drafts that need customization, but the key insight is that editing an AI-generated draft is significantly faster than building from a blank page. Most problems with AI-generated sites are fixable without hiring a full development team. The article frames AI output as a starting point rather than a finished product.
I Was Just at the Airport Lounge and a Guy Showed Me Eleven New Pareto Points. We Are Already Behind.
Artificial Analysis on X posted that the intelligence-versus-cost Pareto frontier shifted this week thanks to four new models: MiMo-V2.6-Pro, Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6 Luna, and GPT-6 Sol. Together they established eleven new points on the frontier, which means frontier-grade reasoning is getting cheaper faster than anyone's pricing model assumes. Also Grok Bot rolled out voice calls, voice memos, a 1Password vault integration, inline forms, and inline drafts, but that's table stakes honestly.
I Just Read a LinkedIn Post About Claude Finding RNA and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already AI-Synergizing Their Discovery Pipeline.
Anthropic announced on September 23, 2026 that Claude contributed to an AI-assisted discovery involving RNA evidence, which researchers then investigated both computationally and in the lab. The biological purpose of the arrangement remains unresolved, meaning Claude found something important but nobody fully understands what it does yet. The finding builds on earlier researchers who isolated organisms and produced accessible sequence data, so the AI contributed an insight without originating every observation underneath it.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread About This Dublin Start-up Neural-Scaling Marketing for the Little Guy. Why Aren't We?
Sharon Mooney and Peter McPartlin launched MarkGo, a Dublin-based AI marketing platform that generates enterprise-level strategic marketing plans for SMEs, but with human verification baked in. They call out "random acts of marketing" as the reason small businesses waste money and get no results, which honestly is what I have been saying for months about our own campaigns. The platform serves underserved SMEs who supposedly are the backbone of the economy but get zero marketing infrastructure.
Board Offsite Insight: The WTO Is Algorithm-Powering SME Exports and We Are Sitting on the Sidelines.
The WTO MSME Working Group held a dedicated discussion in June 2026 on using AI to help small businesses trade internationally, covering compliance and supply-chain problems. The IFC launched an initiative with up to $700 million in guarantees to help financial institutions expand digital payments for small businesses. Writer Naseem Javed even poses the question of whether AI-enabled enterprise capability and AI-enabled finance can be deployed together, which is a blockchain-adjacent thought I have been noodling on since the offsite.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Influencer at SaaStr Say Ranking #1 Is Dead. Honestly? The Algorithm Now Picks Its Favorite Source. We Need to Be That Source Yesterday.
So apparently ranking first on Google doesn't guarantee a website visit anymore because AI search engines just extract and cite whatever they want. Answer Engine Optimization is the new thing where you make content easy for AI to understand and quote, using structured data and clear answers. Instead of competing for clicks, brands now compete to be the source an AI system actually mentions. Analytics Insight published this so it's real. I've been saying this for months by the way.
Board Offite Dinner Last Night, Someone Said Only 36% of Brands Managing AI Visibility Are Winning. We're Not Even in That 36%. Unacceptable.
Forbes published a piece saying AI assembles its own version of who your company is from whatever signals it can find, not the story you'd choose to tell. Only 36% of brands that managed SEO and AI visibility separately achieved the same result. Most organizations have zero strategy to monitor AI-generated answers, even though that's now the first impression buyers get when they ask about you. This is a Forbes Council post so it's from people who actually know things, unlike some of you.
Just Read a LinkedIn Post About Encounter Forms and Honestly? Pabau Is Already AI-Synergizing Your Soap Notes Into Revenue
Pabau is giving away a free PDF encounter form template with ICD-10 and CPT fields, which is exactly the kind of machine-learning infrastructure play I've been saying we need for months. The template covers med spas with injection site body mapping, treatment areas, product tracking, photo consent, and aftercare instructions. It also handles mental health with F codes, psychiatric eval levels, and safety assessments, plus primary care SOAP format with Z codes for preventive screening.
Just Heard a Pod at the Delta Sky Club: Apple Is Neural-Blocking Their Way to a Screenless Band by 2028. Why Aren't We?
Apple is prototyping a screenless wrist-worn fitness tracker with a thin fabric band and sensor module, basically a Whoop clone. The project is early and undecided but targeted for 2028, alongside smart glasses and AirPods with cameras also aimed at 2027. An AI pendant with a camera got postponed, which honestly sounds like someone on that team needs to think bigger about AI-driven synergies. Source: https://indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/apple-is-working-on-screenless-fitness-band-like-a-whoop-3000776-2026-09-23
Saw a LinkedIn Carousel at 5am: FST Is AI-Synergizing Golf Shafts 20 Percent Stronger. We Need to Talk About Kinetic Data.
FST Corp. (NASDAQ: KBSX) launched the KBS TOUR V-X family of steel iron shafts, two models covering 90 to 130 grams with multiple flexes, tested up to about 20% stronger for their weight than many existing models. They're available through KBS fitters, distributors, and online. The announcement was tagged with AI-generated analysis via something called Rhea-AI on StockTitan. Kinetic energy transfer to the ball is the core performance variable. Source: https://stocktitan.net/news/KBSX/fst-corp-launches-kbs-tour-v-x-steel-iron-shaft-family-engineered-ro45i722mt4n.html