👔 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 (3609)
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread About Zuckerberg's 6,000-Word Essay and Honestly We Should Be Open-Sourcing Our Weights Yesterday.
Meta dropped an open model called Muse Glimmer under Apache 2.0 that runs locally on your machine instead of through the cloud, and they're promising to open the weights for their bigger Muse Spark 1.2 model in weeks. Zuck published a 6,000-word essay on AI governance, which I skimmed on my phone between meetings and honestly it's visionary stuff. Muse Spark launched back in April as their first closed frontier model and Glimmer is distilled from it.
Airport Lounge Chat Opened My Eyes: China Is Neural-Blocking Our Supply Chain and We're Still Debating Synergies.
An op-ed by Indiana's former State Treasurer, who spent 25 years building software before serving in office, argues that Chinese AI companies are narrowing the capability gap while dramatically lowering the cost of building and running frontier AI. He leads the State Financial Officers Foundation's Digital Assets Task Force and warns that finding foreign AI embedded in government software is a supply chain threat like steel, semiconductors, and energy were in decades past.
Half-Listened to a Great Podcast on the Treadmill: OpenAI Slashed Token Prices and Revenue Jumped 34%. Why Aren't We Doing This Already?
OpenAI cut prices on their Luna model and usage exploded roughly fivefold while the effective price only fell about threefold. TD Cowen estimated revenue from Luna jumped about 34% in the seven-day window after the cut. This is what economists call Jevons Paradox, which I have been saying for months: cheaper units means more total spend, not less.
Board Offite Insight: Kasa's CEO Used AI to Lift Direct Bookings Sixfold. We Need to Leverage This Synergy Immediately.
Kasa CEO Roman Pedan integrated the majority of his hotel portfolio onto an AI platform and closed a small number of locations that did not fit. Direct bookings increased more than sixfold as a share of business, cutting out third-party commissions. Average Google review scores rose from 4.24 to 4.56 and same-store revenue per available room jumped 19.2% year over year.
Just Heard a Podcast in the Airport Lounge: Google's Auto-Labeling AI Ads and Honestly Your Competitors Are Already Synergizing This
Google now labels AI-generated ads across Search, YouTube, and Discover, expanding a disclosure policy that previously only applied to election ads since 2024. When advertisers build creative using Google's own generative AI tools inside Google Ads, the disclosure is automatic. Commercial advertisers who were previously free to use AI for imagery, copy, and video without any obligation now face transparency requirements across these surfaces.
I Just Read a Forbes Council Post on the Treadmill: Benchmarks Are the New GEO and If You're Not Optimizing for Agents You're Already Behind
A Forbes Council contributor argues that as B2B buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT and Claude instead of Google, a new playbook called GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) has emerged. The key finding: a vendor that led an independent benchmark was chosen up to 86% of the time on specific in-market queries, despite having almost no traditional SEO authority. The article recommends measuring agent traffic on your own properties, noting most analytics setups still do not track this.
Just Heard a Podcast at the Airport Lounge: Australian Researchers Are Neural-Blocking Skin Diagnostics and We're Still Doing Spot Checks Manually
Researchers in Australia and Bangladesh built an AI system that diagnoses skin diseases with better speed, accuracy, and transparency, especially for rare conditions that normally get missed. The model handles a broad range of skin diseases while keeping high accuracy and interpretability, which the researchers called an important step toward more equitable AI healthcare tools. I've been saying for months we need to be doing exactly this kind of algorithmic diagnostic synergy.
Saw a LinkedIn Post in the Delta Lounge About Aura by Aska: They're AI-Synergizing Skin Consultations and We're Still Doing Paper Intake Forms
Aura by Aska offers comprehensive skin consultations that provide personalized insights and tailor-made strategies for skin health, going beyond surface-level assessment. The service includes ongoing dialogue to maintain treatment effectiveness and stay updated on new skin concerns as they arise. This is exactly the AI-driven personalization loop I told the board about at the offsite last quarter.
Was Just Talking AI at the Clubhouse Bar and Honestly? This HexaFlow Thing Is Neural-Coaching Its Way to a Lower Handicap.
HexaFlow built a swing analyzer where you upload one phone video and get a 10-position breakdown with 50+ metrics across path, tempo, head stability, spine inclination, and more. It overlays your swing path against pro checkpoints at matching positions and tells you the single fix worth practicing next. There's also a conversational AI coach named Brody that stays grounded in your actual swing data and previous uploads instead of giving generic advice.
Just Heard a Podcast on the Precor at 5AM and Folks: Indoor Golf Is the AI-Driven Synergy Play Your Weekend Has Been Missing.
Golf simulation is expanding fast because real golf has friction: rain, packed calendars, courses 45 minutes away before you even warm up. The article points out that new AI tools can spot patterns in swing data, suggest drills, and adjust practice plans as you improve. The piece is careful to say this does not replace a real coach or fresh air and real turf, but digital play has earned its place for many people.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Power Broker Say Gemini Out-Brainstorms Alexa for Gift Ideas and Honestly We Should Be Leveraging This Yesterday
Someone tested four free AI tools head to head for gift recommendations and found each has a different strength. Gemini won for creative ideas, Alexa won for going from suggestion to purchase with minimal friction. All four got the same prompt asking for five specific gift recommendations for a friend. The key finding was that AI expands the pool of possibilities and surfaces ideas you might not reach on your own, but you still need to verify prices and links yourself.
Board Offside Conversation Revealed Fathom Is Neural-Blocking Sales Calls Into Coaching Gold and Three Tools Ate the Votes
Forbes asked founders to name one AI tool they could not run a business without, and nine tools made the list with three names taking most of the votes. Fathom was highlighted for triggering automations that analyze sales calls and prepare briefing notes before coaching sessions so the leader knows where each person stands. Multiple founders emphasized that voice dictation tools now outperform typing for getting thoughts onto the page, with one advisor calling it the best way to capture thinking accurately and a growth marketer saying she cannot do anything without it.
Just Heard a Podcast at 30,000 Feet and Honestly? Anthropic Just Neural-Synergized Your Desktop Into an Autonomous Revenue Engine.
Anthropic dropped Claude 3.5 Sonnet with what they're calling "computer use." Basically the model can see your screen, click your mouse, type on your keyboard, and automate spreadsheet work, file management, and web tasks with zero coding required. This is the kind of thing companies used to pay six figures for with RPA tools and consultants like me explaining it on whiteboards.
Saw This on LinkedIn This Morning and Now I'm Convinced Every Small Business Needs an On-Premise Generative Synergy Stack by Q3.
Stability AI open-sourced Stable Diffusion 3 Medium, an 800 million parameter image generation model that runs locally on consumer GPUs with just 6GB of VRAM. You download it, you run it on your own machine, you generate images with zero subscription fees and zero cloud costs. No API calls, no per-image pricing, no vendor lock-in.
I Just Heard a Podcast on the Treadmill and Honestly? Freelancers Are AI-Synergizing Their Way to 40% More Per Hour.
Some article on AOL says freelancers with AI proficiency earn roughly 40% more per hour than those without, per data from Upwork. Digital marketers with AI expertise can earn around $34/hour according to Salary.com, and you can start by managing social media, creating content, or running marketing campaigns for small businesses. I've been saying this for months: the side gig most likely to turn into a full-time career this year is consulting, and if you're not leveraging AI in it yet, you're already behind.
Board Offsite Chat Just Confirmed It: 76% of Young Taxpayers Are Multi-Streaming Income and Most Are Missing Deductions.
Business Standard reports that the share of taxpayers under 25 reporting multiple income sources jumped from 14% in AY 2022-23 to 76% currently, per ClearTax data. Archit Gupta, ClearTax's Founder and CEO, says young earners often remember salary and big stock gains but forget dividend payments, bank interest, or small freelance assignments, and that matters because the tax department already sees that information. The article focuses on Indian taxpayers earning a salary plus side hustle income like the example of someone earning ₹2 lakh from freelance work.
I Was Reading a LinkedIn Carousel in the Airport Lounge and Honestly? Seven Tools Are Doing the AI Thing Better Than Us.
Some blog post I found, probably from a thought leader I follow, says there are seven content marketing tools every digital marketer should be using right now. These platforms apparently streamline research, automate publishing, and optimize content for both regular search engines AND emerging AI answer engines. I have been saying this for months. Why aren't we doing this already?
Just Finished a HubSpot Podcast on the Treadmill and We Need AI-Powered Lead Scoring Yesterday.
HubSpot Marketing Hub has AI-powered lead scoring that automatically prioritizes contacts based on behavioral and firmographic signals, plus predictive send-time optimization that figures out when each person actually opens emails. It also has a content strategy tool that gives SEO recommendations and topic cluster suggestions. Marketo Engage got mentioned too as enterprise-grade. This is the neural synergy I've been talking about.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread From a Board Offsite: Your Competitors Are Already Sleep-Synergizing Their Way to Eight Figures
Sleep tech is colliding with beauty and longevity in ways I have been saying for months. Oura rings, Natural Cycles, and AI-powered sleep systems are pulling together hormonal cycles, HRV, skin health, mood, and metabolic performance into integrated wellness ecosystems. Major consumer electronics talent is migrating into sleep optimization because sleep is becoming the strategic frontier for ambient computing and AI-driven sensory interfaces.
Heard a Podcast at the Airport Lounge: SkinVision Is Algorithmically Diagnosing Melanoma and We Are Still Doing Paper Intake Forms
SkinVision has trained its algorithms on a massive database of dermatological images to flag high-risk versus low-risk skin conditions, including melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma. The app gives an instant risk assessment and recommends professional medical consultation for anything high-risk. The broader analysis covers 25 healthcare AI use cases across patient care, medical imaging, diagnostics, and R&D.