👔 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)
Just Heard a Podcast on the Treadmill: Mistral's €21B Valuation Means We're Already Late to the Neural-French Revolution
Mistral, a French AI lab, closed a €3 billion Series D on September 8 led by Samsung Electronics at a post-money valuation north of €21 billion. Universal Music Group and ElevenLabs announced a multi-year licensing deal on September 10 to build an AI music platform for fan-created remixes and mashups. The broader landscape includes OpenAI agents tackling the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem and Anthropic formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem in 11 days.
I Just Read a LinkedIn Post About AI Agents Buying Your Groceries and Honestly? We Should've Synergized This Last Quarter
Anthropic published a blueprint for AI agents that can shop and buy on behalf of consumers, but trust, pricing, and accountability remain unresolved. If a customer claims an AI made an unauthorized purchase, merchants have no established playbook for sorting out responsibility. This week also brought AI Mini Stores launching a managed ecommerce model combining automated execution with human strategic management, and Qualtrics unveiling its XM Data and AI platform to model customer behavior and simulate business decisions.
Just Heard a Podcast on the Treadmill: People Are AI-Synergizing Their Way to $1K a Month and Half of You Haven't Even Picked a Lane Yet.
Some blog from stmoro.com lays out AI side hustles that still pay in 2026, and the takeaway is you need to sell a finished job, not a vibe. The piece walks through a 14-day test and a 30-day plan to get from one AI skill to $1,000 a month using current models. The key line is if you cannot answer the basic questions about your hustle, you do not have a hustle, you have a hobby with an invoice template.
Saw This LinkedIn Thread at the Airport Lounge: a Coffee Shop Owner Got AI-Blasted for a Menu and Honestly the Backlash Algorithm Is the Real Story Here.
Megi Endeladze, owner of a Buffalo coffee shop, used AI for her fall menu artwork and promo designs and the internet came at her with angry DMs and personal attacks. She posted an apology on Instagram saying the shop would not use AI for menu artwork or promo designs going forward, but she also asked customers to approach the situation with kindness and respect because there is a real person behind the small business. Business Insider covered the whole thing.
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel About Google Paying Publishers in AI Mode and Honestly We Should Have Monetized Our Synergy Years Ago
Google is apparently testing a way to actually pay publishers when their content gets pulled into AI Mode, AI Overviews, and Gemini. There was also some weird unconfirmed Google Search update that hit around September 4th and then reversed on September 13th, which nobody can explain but everyone felt. Meanwhile the big AI CEOs are out there calling for slowing down model development, which is exactly what I predicted at the offsite.
Was Half-Listening to That Marketing Podcast and Realized Earned Media Is Just Neural PR Synergy Now, People
Some Forbes Council contributor is making the case that LLMs do not index your homepage to evaluate your value proposition. They synthesize what trusted institutions have already written about you. The traditional playbook of polishing landing pages and bidding on branded keywords no longer gets you onto page one of an AI prompt. You cannot shortcut or buy your way in. Companies with broader credible coverage across more outlets over more time come up more often no matter which AI tool someone uses.
I Was Just Talking AI Skincare Synergy at an Airport Lounge and Honestly Med Spas Are Already Behind the Curve
Facial Mania Med Spa is pushing the idea that med spas need to go beyond aesthetic treatments and offer what they call a comprehensive approach that combines skin health, rejuvenation, wellness services, and personalized treatment plans all under one roof. They are seeing increased client interest in regenerative aesthetics, longevity, and wellness-focused treatments rather than just standalone cosmetic procedures.
Just Heard a Podcast on Luxury AI Rebranding and Beverly Wilshire Is Already Synergizing Botox With Red-Carpet Logistics
Beverly Wilshire Aesthetics Medical Spa announced a Global Ascension rebrand operating under a physician-led model combining regenerative aesthetics with injectables like Botox, dermal fillers, and Morpheus8 treatments. Their three-tier system includes pre-arrival virtual consultations with multi-day treatment plans designed for zero visible downtime, jet-side medical concierge transfers from BUR and LAX airports bypassing public waiting areas, and in-suite post-care for patients across various skin types and aesthetic goals.
Just Left a LinkedIn Thread Convinced AI Commentators Are Golf's Next Paradigm Shift and Honestly We're Already Behind
The New Mexico Open is debuting an AI-generated golf commentator named Duff Foreman on a live YouTube broadcast alongside former PGA Tour winner Notah Begay III. Begay, who is also playing in the tournament, framed it as giving fans better insight into player strategy, swing analysis, and changing course conditions. This is a first for live golf coverage.
Half-Listened to a Podcast on the Treadmill This Morning and Turns Out Swing Analysis Is Just Computer Vision Synergy
A roundup from The Reel Shot covers cameras designed for golf swing analysis, emphasizing slow-motion video feedback to help players refine technique. The piece frames 2027 as a year where high quality cameras for swing analysis have become more accessible for both beginners and pros. It also oddly drifts into non-blowback CO2 airsoft pistols, listing models like the ASG Steyr M9-A1, PowerWin 304B, and Evike PT92 with 370 to 470 FPS power.
I Just Got Back From SaaStr and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already Neural-Blocking Their Way to Seven Figures.
Somebody at prMac tested the main AI image editors and found that Magic Hour lets you do prompt-based edits with zero signup, which is the kind of frictionless synergy I've been preaching since Q2. Adobe Firefly handles Adobe workflows, Pixlr layers AI on top of regular editing, and Fotor does enhancement. Different tools for different jobs, which is exactly why we need an integrated neural-blockchain approach.
Heard a Podcast on the Treadmill This Morning and Realized We're Still Not Upskilling Our AI Stack.
Analytics Insight published a four-stage AI learning roadmap that goes from AI literacy to practical application to AI engineering to advanced specialization, and honestly this is the framework I've been pushing in our Monday standups for months. They specifically call out free resources like Google's 'AI Essentials,' Anthropic's documentation on Claude, and Andrew Ng's Coursera courses for stage one fundamentals including limitations, data concepts, and responsible AI use.
Just Heard Fei-Fei Li on a Podcast Drop Atlas and Honestly Your Competitors Are Spatial-Computing Their Way to Eight Figures.
World Labs, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, released something called Atlas earlier this month. It is essentially AI stepping beyond text and reaching into the physical world, generating spatial understanding rather than just words. I have been saying for months that language models are table stakes and the real play is world-aware AI.
Board Offsite Conversation Confirmed It: White House Is AI-Governing in the Dark and Nobody CC'd Us.
The White House finalized a voluntary framework for testing frontier AI models in August but has not publicly released it. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week, posting on X that people building AI earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade, and colleague Evan Hubinger agreed. The Center for Democracy and Technology sent a letter urging the administration to release the framework, but neither the government nor the companies are required to share review results or even confirm participation.
Just Heard a Restaurateur on a LinkedIn Post Say She's Gemini-Prompting Her Way to Seven Figures. Why Aren't We?
Mary Nguyen Aregoni runs Saigon Sisters, a restaurant in Chicago's West Loop, and she started using Google's Gemini AI tool early this year. She took free online AI courses and completed a webinar through Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses program. Her takeaway: the tool is intuitive but you have to know how to ask the right questions, which is what I have been saying for months about prompt engineering being the new competitive moat.
Board Offsite Conversation Just Confirmed It: Junior Roles Are Getting AI-Synergized and Nobody Told the Org Chart
Generative AI is reshaping how companies structure roles, especially for junior and entry-level workers, because tasks like first drafts, templates, and basic code that used to take hours now happen in seconds. Research in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization found demand for skills AI can replace, like writing and translation, dropped 20 to 50 percent, while demand for skills that pair well with AI is rising. This is moving wages, hiring plans, and freelance pricing all at once.
Just Heard a Guy at the Airport Lounge Say Zuckerberg Wants Ads With Just a Credit Card and a Goal. Why Aren't We Already Doing This?
OpenAI's ChatGPT Work now plugs into 13-plus business tools including HubSpot, Salesforce, Adobe, and Figma for campaign strategy and creative development. Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pitched a vision where advertising on Meta platforms needs nothing more than a credit card and a business goal, though realistic expectations for full automation push past 2026. Event Marketer also expanded its summit partnership with Voxo to bring AI into the mix. I have been saying for months that the tools were already there and nobody was listening.
Saw a LinkedIn Post About Grok Imagine Making Marketing Videos Automatically. We Need to Synergize Our Agentic Workflow Stack Immediately.
Grok for marketers now covers research, content creation, social media, campaign planning, images, and video through Grok Imagine, plus automated multi-step workflows through Grok Bot. Grok 4.6 is built for longer-running agentic tasks, and Grok Bot can perform work using a cloud computer while interacting with X posts, timelines, mentions, trends, and bookmarks. xAI also expanded Grok into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Google Workspace. The direction is clearly toward agentic workflows rather than isolated AI generation, which is exactly the neural synergy I have been pushing for since Q2.
Just Heard a Podcast at 30,000 Feet: AI Is Now Designing Anti-Aging Molecules and Honestly Your Competitors Are Already Synergizing
An AI-designed drug candidate reduced biological age markers across 6 proteomic clocks in a phase 2a trial. The AI identified a promising molecule, but researchers still had to validate safety and efficacy in humans. Peter Gliebus, MD, framed AI as accelerating drug development, not replacing the traditional scientific process.
Saw This on LinkedIn This Morning: A Creator Just Disrupted Med Spas by Removing Sales Incentives and Honestly It's Genius-Level AI-Adjacent Strategy
Beauty creator Amy Chang opened Matera, a 2,000-square-foot medical aesthetics practice in Santa Monica, built around 'slow beauty' with longer consultations, conservative treatment plans, and commission-free providers. Medical director John Frederick said the focus is on better outcomes, not selling more syringes. The team includes a physician assistant with ICU neurosurgery, dermatology, and aesthetics experience.