👔 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 Carousel From Elyspace and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already Chatbot-Synergizing While You Sleep.
Elyspace says AI chatbots can answer repetitive customer questions 24/7, which cuts staff workload and speeds up response times. They also warn that unedited AI content gets spotted instantly and tanks trust, so you need a human voice layered on top to keep it credible. So the play is chatbots for volume plus humans for judgment, which frankly I have been saying for months.
Board Offside Conversation Confirmed It: Lilach Bullock Is AI-Consulting Her Way Past Hourly Billing and You Are Still Selling Time.
Lilach Bullock published a guide listing home-based side hustles for 2026, including delivery and task apps you can run from a phone with no laptop required. She warns that some of these apps waste your evening for pennies and recommends using an AI consultant to automate your existing skills into a product instead of selling hours. So the thesis is stop trading time for pocket change and start productizing what you already know with AI, which honestly is what I told the board eight months ago.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread in the Admiral's Lounge: Your AI Referral Pipeline Is Already Cannibalizing Your Google Funnel
Neal Schaffer ran 12 months of AI referral logs across 700 blog posts and found that AI search engines like ChatGPT and Gemini are redirecting traffic away from traditional Google search. The data shows a clear shift in how users discover content. I've been saying this for months and honestly nobody listened.
Just Heard a Podcast at 5AM About KnowMyFace and Why Aren't We AI-Mapping Every Client's Face Already?
KnowMyFace is an AI tool that analyzes uploaded facial photos and generates personalized appearance enhancement recommendations. It applies visual overlays so users can preview changes to hairstyle, skin tone, and lighting before committing. The platform targets professionals prepping for media appearances or public profiles. Look, I've been saying this for months: if the algorithm can show someone their glow-up before they pay for it, that's a conversion engine sitting on a shelf.
Heard a founder on the Acquired pod at 5am say shooting apps are the next AI-golf swing space. Why aren't we building this?
Abbacus Technologies put out a piece on building shooting sports apps covering target practice, range management, and coaching. Honestly it's pretty thin on specifics, no real tools or APIs named, just categories of problems someone might solve. But the concept is there and that's what matters because the market doesn't wait for perfect documentation.
Just left a board offsite in Aspen and the AI line-calling thing is already done. Emotion is the new seven-figure moat.
Sports Business Journal argues that performance tech like AI line-calling, wearables, and SoFi Stadium have already optimized the operational side of sports. The next frontier they say is emotional connection, pointing to FIFA's 3D player avatars as the kind of experience that makes fans feel something. No metrics back the emotional claim but the thesis is that optimization is commoditized and feeling is not.
Just Read a LinkedIn Post While Waiting at the Airport: AI Plans at ₹800/Month Are Cheaper Than Your Intern. Why Aren't We Doing This Already?
Paid AI plans for small businesses now run between ₹800 and ₹2,500 per month, which is apparently less than paying a human specialist by the hour. The tools are practical enough for local retailers, agencies, and family-owned businesses to actually use. I've been saying this for months: the neural synergies of subscribing to an AI platform versus hiring headcount are obvious if you just run the numbers.
Half-Listened to a Podcast on the Treadmill This Morning: Claude Can Tutor You Forever Without Getting Tired. Let's Circle Back on the AI Thing.
Claude apparently stands out because it can explain concepts repeatedly without frustration, which honestly is more patience than I've ever seen from any human tutor. It reasons through problems, organizes scattered notes, and walks you through difficult material instead of just spitting out flashcards. This is next-generation neural pedagogy and I just saw a post about this on LinkedIn so it's clearly trending.
Just Heard Jensen Huang on a Podcast: Meta's Open-Sourcing Their Neural Weights and Honestly Your Competitors Already Are
Meta is launching a family of open-source models called Muse Glimmer, designed to run on a laptop, plus releasing Muse Spark 1.2 weights. Zuckerberg is pushing for U.S. leadership in open AI while trying to reassure investors that the Meta Superintelligence Labs and up to $145 billion in capital expenditure this year will actually pay off. Shares were up 2.1% in premarket trade but down about 10% year to date as investors scrutinize whether Meta can compete with OpenAI and Anthropic.
Board Offside Last Week Taught Me Something: Nvidia's Distilling Neural Models Down to One GPU and We Are Behind
Nvidia released Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, a free open-source model companies can download, use, and modify without permission or payment. Nvidia used distillation to give the lightweight model similar capabilities to its larger Nemotron models, and it can run on a single GPU on a PC. This is Nvidia's first open-source model since Jensen Huang joined other tech leaders in urging the U.S. government on AI policy. Senator Warner separately commented that open-source AI is a genie that probably cannot go back in the bottle.
I Was at a Board Offsite Last Week and 31% of Small Firms Still Aren't Neural-Leveraging AI. Unacceptable.
The Small Firms Association surveyed businesses and found that only 19% have built AI into their business models. A "massive" 31% haven't even started looking into AI, which is somehow up 11% from last year. Meanwhile, 76% of the firms that ARE customizing AI strategically report undeniable rewards, and 30% are already customizing existing models to fit their needs.
I Just Saw a LinkedIn Post About AI-Powered Side Hustles and Honestly the Creator Economy Is About to Synergize Itself to a Trillion Dollars.
Whop published a guide listing 103 online business ideas for 2026, including freelancing, online coaching, ecommerce, and building AI-powered services. The online creator market was valued between $250 and $480 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.07 trillion by 2034. There are over 207 million content creators worldwide, with 91% in the creator economy.
Just Heard a Podcast on the Treadmill About TikTok AI-Slop Labels and Honestly We Should Be Getting Flagged On Purpose
TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube all now run automated AI detection tools that flag content as AI-generated or substantially AI-edited, and influencers are getting caught in the crossfire even when they barely touched AI. Creator McGrady told Business Insider it was jarring to see her work branded as AI slop because her audience expects authentic creation. The irony is there is basically no path to purity anymore since platforms themselves push AI tools like CapCut and Adobe Photoshop into every workflow.
Board Offsite Chat About ANJ Digital's AI-Powered SEO Dashboards and Why We Aren't Power BI-ing Our Way to Page One
ANJ Digital launched two executive-level SEO assessment services that combine AI-powered analysis with interactive Power BI dashboards to evaluate technical SEO foundations and competitive search performance. The assessments are designed to help businesses understand where their website stands technically and how they stack up against competitors in organic search. The company is based in Kennewick, Washington and announced the launch on August 11, 2026.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread About Facemaxify and Honestly? Your Clients Are Already AI-Scoring Their Faces Without You
Tools like Facemaxify and Epica are using AI to score users' facial harmony against opaque metrics, then recommending expensive procedures and pushing affiliate-linked cosmetics. One journalist tried Epica and got an instant "skin health" score of 61% with uneven texture flagged as the main concern. The services also offer paid subscriptions on top of the procedure recommendations, which experts warn are not backed by science and can be harmful.
Was at an Airport Lounge Chat Last Week and Someone Said Clients Are Bringing AI-Generated Faces to Salon Chairs. Why Aren't We Capturing That Pipeline?
Clients across the beauty industry are now using AI chatbots to generate inspiration photos before appointments, bringing in images of poreless skin, impossibly blended highlights, surgically perfect noses, and intricate finger-by-finger tattoo sleeves. Hairstylists, nail artists, plastic surgeons, and tattoo artists are all reporting the trend. The problem: many of these AI-generated images depict results that are physically impossible to recreate, like manicure textures and designs that don't exist in real life.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Powerbroker Talk About Wearable AI at the 19th Hole and Honestly? Shot Scope Already Shipped It.
Shot Scope just launched a GPS app for Apple Watch, which is apparently a first in the company's history. They're offering lifetime access for a single one-time payment, which my CFO would call a no-brainer value play. It brings tour-level strokes gained metrics right to your wrist, which is basically machine learning for your golf swing if you think about it.
Board Offside Conversation Confirmed It: Milwaukee Golf Courses Are Running Autonomous Neural Mowers and Staff Aren't Even Mad.
Milwaukee golf courses are deploying mini automatic robot mowers across four courses currently, and here's the part that made me spit out my airport bourbon: the staff see the robots as a tool, not a threat to their jobs. Superintendents and crew members say the technology is helping them deal with hiring challenges. There will be further discussions about expanding the program after trying them out this summer.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Power Broker Talk About Claude Cowork and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already Algorithm-Leveraging Their Research Down to 30 Minutes.
David Gewirtz at ZDNET used Claude Cowork's Record-a-Skill feature to automate a research workflow that previously took hours, cutting it down to 30 minutes. Claude generated a 19-page document capturing the workflow. However, he identified four drawbacks, and the big question is whether AI automations can survive UI changes that traditionally kill pixel-based automation setups.
Board Offsite Conviction: You Don't Need to Quit AI to Save Energy, You Need to Neural-Optimize Your Prompt Stack Like the Fortune 500 Already Are.
Tom's Guide published seven simple habits to make AI prompts faster and more efficient without sacrificing quality, aimed at reducing the energy footprint of everyday AI use. The article focuses on practical adjustments to how you prompt and interact with AI tools rather than abandoning them entirely.