Field Notes

01

2026-07-26

12 min read

Decanting the Halo: Trust as an Acquirable, Depletable Asset in the Wellness Portfolio

You cannot build trust at a conglomerate's cost of capital. You can only buy it, pre-aged, from someone who spent twenty years earning it at a shelf — and then spend it down.

A portfolio memo on the one asset class in supplements that no amount of marketing spend can originate — only acquire. What it costs, and why the label should never mention that we now own it.

02

2026-07-18

11 min read

Involuntary Daily Active Users: A Framework for Post-Consent Adoption

Persuasion doesn't scale. The default does. A reference architecture for shipping the assistant your users keep asking how to turn off.

This quarter, one company's AI assistant achieved something no adoption funnel in history has achieved: one hundred percent penetration. A study of how, and of the beautiful, load-bearing absence at the center of it — the off switch that was never shipped.

03

2026-07-15

11 min read

Attrition-Adjusted Knowledge Capture: A Framework for Workforce Continuity at the Keystroke Layer

The model learns by watching really smart people. Retaining the people is a separate workstream, and it has been deprioritized.

An all-hands memo on the quarter's learnings: what we captured, where it landed, why that word does not mean what the petition says it means, and what distillation asks of a workforce.

04

2026-07-15

11 min read

Passive Enrollment at the Municipal Layer: Toward a Unified Theory of the Unconsented User

The taxpayer funds the sensor. The sensor feeds the network. The network is the product. You, driving to work, are the inventory.

Customer acquisition cost is the defining constraint of modern SaaS. One company solved it — not by lowering the cost of acquiring users, but by abolishing the requirement that users agree to be acquired. A framework memo.

05

2026-04-20

9 min read

Notes from the Afternoon: On the Industrialization of a Counterculture

The plant was the product. The platform is the product now. I want to tell you, gently, what we did — and what Dutchie, the most valuable cannabis-commerce company of the decade, now does, annually, on the last Sunday afternoon in April.

It is 4:20 in the afternoon as I write this. There is a particular cultural weight to this hour on this date, and I want to honor it by being honest about what we — the practitioners of this industry — have done to the plant, and to the people who believed the plant was a refusal.

06

2026-04-18

12 min read

Bending Spoons: The Masterclass in Portfolio Resolution

How a Milan-based mobile-app shop quietly became the most efficient layoff vendor in tech — and why every beloved brand in your bookmark bar should be worried

When the Italian firm enters your software company's data room, you have six months to a year. The employees have less. I want to take you through what they have done, and I want to be honest with you about how I feel about it.

07

2024-12-01

11 min read

Ticketmaster: A Masterclass in Monopolistic Extraction

How to charge $500 in fees for a $95 ticket and make fans blame Taylor Swift

When forty state attorneys general and the federal government bring a joint antitrust action against a single company, you have either done something very wrong or something very right. From an extraction perspective, Ticketmaster chose the latter. I want to tell you why I admire it.

08

2024-09-22

12 min read

The AI Extraction Revolution: Why Your Competitors Are Already Doing This

How machine learning is disrupting the disruption of customer relationships

If you're not using AI to extract value from your customers, your competitors definitely are. Probably. We can't actually verify this, but it sounds scary enough to drive action.