Insights
Analysis and observations on WealthTech strategy, product leadership, and commercial execution.
What Would You Say You Do Here?
The articulation gap limits both your career and your AI effectiveness. A structured interview tool built for context engineering revealed something unexpected about self-knowledge.
The Onboarding Problem Is a Revenue Problem
Wealth management spends billions optimizing portfolios and basis points — then loses clients to a PDF intake form. The highest-leverage moment in the client relationship is the one nobody has redesigned.
The Best I Could Build in a Week
A week-long prototype proves the advisor desktop is the easy part — and the $5M infrastructure beneath it is the real constraint
The 5-Month and $5M Button
Why the real constraint on wealth management innovation is not the front end — it is everything beneath it
Taste and Connection
AI commoditizes replacement-level work. The winning move is taste — and building an audience that trusts yours.
The Knowledge Gap in AI Finance Tools
Workflow automation and domain knowledge are two different layers in AI-assisted finance. Most teams are building one. Almost nobody is building both.
Experiments with AI
The progress AI has made in a past few months is astonishing. Thinking back a year or two, it was just a toy to use for fun language games.
Mental Muscle Memory
Parenting makes you think a lot about your outlook on the world, especially as your kids some to you with things they hear from their friends that may not...
Bad Policies for the Cash Poor
I'm going through the process of submitting expenses to my dependent care FSA, and this is just another great example of a benefit for parent's that not...
Space war
A recent post on twitter got me thinking. The cold war space race was about nuclear offensive and deffesnive capabilities.
Bye line
Journalism is going through a fascinating transition.
Slow News Revisited
In 2018, I talked about slow news. Since then, the media has gone a subscription boom. More and more sovereign writers have left big publishers.
Replacement Level Marketing
Small teams have more reach than ever before, and can build huge businesses with very few resources.
Bodies and Buried Treasure
I see hype about how cryptocurrency frees people from a malicious government seizing your assets.
How to win with persistence
We bought a large, 6x6 yoga mat a few weeks ago.
The spice must flow
It’s been an amazing month for business news.
Deprived of Agency
I’ve had experience working on the phone and in the management of call centers.
Thoughts on keys to career success post 2019
Some thoughts about what skills are becoming more valuable: The best jobs are getting more cross-functional: know business, marketing, product, design,...
My take on coaching a team
Some quick thoughts on coaching a team: give people clear ownership and get out of the way give people room to stretch outside that area of ownership, so...
Reshaping our environment reshapes our behavior
The two biggest ways to change behavior are 1) changing your environment and 2) making small, incremental change.
Lessons on Writing from Michael Lewis
I listened to a fantastic podcast with Michael Lewis, where among other things, he dropped several great keys to the way he approaches writing and...
Keeping government simple
I spend a lot of time thinking about user experience. When I build something, I want it to be simple and clear for the people using it.
How 2018 Changed my Media Consumption
The last few years have really accelerated the “sound and fury” of news media.
The end of truth
We think we are already in a post truth world, but we are barely starting down the path. There are tools that can already fake anyone’s voice or face.
Slow News
The “old” adage on the internet is that “information wants to be free”.
We go for the uncompromised
“The compromise part of the market is very well serviced,” Burmeister says. “So we go for the uncompromised.
Strong verbs, short sentences
My favorite advice for communication and persuasion I was listening to Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell’s great podcast, and he featured Bernadine...
What a $3 Million Campaign Donation Buys
In Georgia today, a recording of the Lt.
Bannon, ISIS, and the Clash of Civilizations
Bannon gave an interview in 2014, which is a fascinating look into his worldview.
Trump’s America: What I am Watching
We have a new president, and Republicans have control of Congress.
A reflection on the peril of raised expectations as I wait for my Verizon repairman
My FIOS home internet stopped working on Thursday. That’s a minor inconvenience. I look up the service phone number and call — my expectations are low.
Universal Basic Income and Exploding Knowledge
We are living amongst the greatest democrtization of both knowledge and the means of production ever in history.
A robots native tongue
There is a ton of hype today about bots and AI interacting with users as the next bug computing interface. To me, this misses the bigger question.
Vanguard, Wealthfront, and the Fight for the Future of Retirement
For the average investor, investing in the stock market is pretty similar now to the 1950’s — it’s faster and cheaper, but not too different.
Foundations for the Future
I have been reading a lot of relatively new technologies that I think will combined in fascinating ways to create the next big shift.
Debt We Must Pay
Most people struggle plenty with personal, financial debt. It is hard to think about the long term consequences of our short term actions.
Robin Hood and His Merry Robo-Advisors
(image removed - originally hosted on Medium) There are a lot of young brokerage and wealth management companies starting today with a modern technology...
Incentives Are Overdone
We read a lot about situations where incentives lead to “bad” or less than ideal behavior (my current favorite example is every morning on my way to work,...
Groupon’s Worst Nightmare
Groupon is wildly successful, a market leader, generating incredible growth, revenue, attention, and market valuations.
Not Just A Pay Wall
The internet has been abuzz about the NYT’s new pay wall.
Good Time to Be Great
(image removed - originally hosted on Medium) The interactive chart featured here is making the rounds on the web, because it tells a story about how the...
Battle of the Bulging Middle Class
The mainstream media is starting to spread the narrative about rising income inequality in America: \[In 1915\]King was somewhat troubled to find that the...
Shooting Ourselves in the Foot
Matt Taibbi has another entertaining and informative article on financial reform: The Sanders amendment, if it survives in conference, will lead to some...
Privacy is a Thing of the Past
“Three men can keep if a secret, if two are dead” — Benjamin Franklin Privacy has always been difficult to achieve, even during the time of our founding...
Data is Changing Everything
The Economist has a special report on how Data and the tools and technologies we use to understand are changing our lives at an accelerating pace.
Estate Tax and Meritocracy
From a research paper on international management practices and their effect on firm success: One interesting group are the family firms, defined in our...
Imaginationland and Intellectual Property
Imagine a world where when you leave a job, instead of telling you to pack your desk, they tell you to: … deposit your ideas at the door before passing...
Information Tech and the Future of Government
Interesting talk about the technology revolution’s ability to remake government, from the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.
Moderates Make Man-Bear-Pigs
538 has a great article on the role of moderate politicians in congress.
Political Polarization
Another sign of mainstream recognition of political polarization in the United States — From the Economist: The supermajority rule \[60 votes in the...
A Look Inside the Tea Party
The NYTimes has a must read article on the tea party movement.
If something can’t happen, will it?
A great article about systemic instability, financial markets, and the the deficit.
Putting It All Together
I have an emerging view on markets, government, and what to do moving forward, and Better Regulate Than Never | The New Republic help my tie a lot of my...
The Passion of the Banks
The Wall Street journal asks: Was it surprising to investors that Merrill paid $3. 6 billion in bonuses?
Requiem For A Firm
A great article about who and what actually brought down AIG and started the financial fizzle we’re in.
Creative Destruction and Government
When was the last time our government went through a significant overhaul?
Trading in the Fast Lane
If you haven’t heard of High Frequency Trading yet, you will soon.
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
The first thing I learned reading Black Swan, is that Nassim Taleb is highly intelligent, but at least twice as arrogant as he is intelligent.
Could We Change Finance?
A good friend of mine, Amol Kapila, just started his blog back up after a few year’s absence.
I Must Be Taking Crazy Pills…
because this article about health-care actually make sense. (My comments in footnotes).
The Big Bad Wolf in Finance
The Japanese would have a a very different take on the story of the big bad wolf.
Freedom to Act (like an idiot)
It seems to me that some of the biggest debates we see in government and politics is how much government needs to protect people from themselves.
The Fat Tail by Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat
The Fat Tail’s central argument is that businesses rarely forecast and prepare for political risks as well as they do economic ones, which is a mistake...
Financial Fix
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the focus has been on better accounting for risk, better matching employee pay with the long term value they...
The Perils of Paying for Handholding
A financial adviser on selling during a market decline: “They know that in hindsight, it wasn’t the best thing to do,” Mr. Hail said.
Banking Reform Proposal
Summary of the above link: The banking system should be remade in the image of Limited Purpose Banking (LPB).
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
I never got much out of Sunday School aside from the watered down bible’s stories, usually stripped of all context and religious meaning.
Why Finance (Salaries) Won’t Change
The more things change, the more they are the same. In a drought, the river may dry up, but the lay of the land stays the same.