Episode 5: Listening

What deploying a self-evolving agent into a real business actually feels like, week by week. Maria runs dispatch for a waste hauling company. The agent shipped on day one. The system she is operating on day one hundred is one she helped build, by correcting it for fourteen weeks.

The First Hundred Days

The most important categories of the post-agent economy do not fit the venture capital model. That is not a bug. It is a signal about what kind of capital these businesses actually need.

Who Funds the Unfundable

The most important decision in an agent-native company is not the model, the prompt, or the workflow. It is the definition of what good means for a specific customer in a specific vertical. Everything else is infrastructure that serves it.

The Evaluation Function Is the Product

The product surface of an agent-native company is not a dashboard. It is a series of moments: the notification that matters, the summary that compresses, the decision that surfaces while it is still reversible.

The Orchestration Layer

If human value is intrinsic and the four verbs are create, relate, steward, rest, then what does that look like on a product spec sheet? The opportunities are concrete, large, and nobody is building them at the scale the moment requires.

What the Founder Does Monday Morning

Every answer to what humans do when AI does everything is an economic answer to a question that is not economic. The secular discourse has no framework for human purpose independent of productive output. The oldest one does.

What the Work Was For

Self-evolving agents do not replace humans at a moment in time. They replace a slightly larger slice of the human contribution every two weeks, autonomously, forever. That is a different kind of displacement than anything in economic history. Here is the timeline.

The Shrinking Layer

Sixty evolution cycles. Two synthetic businesses. Zero human intervention. The first controlled experiment measuring whether the Adaptive Convergence Protocol actually produces self-improving, customer-divergent agents with regression protection. Here are the numbers.

We Let the Machine Run

Specific predictions about where the service-as-software market goes in the next eighteen months. Some of these will be wrong. All of them are falsifiable. That is the point.

What Dies, What Survives, and What Has Never Existed Before

Everyone worries about AI agents learning their secrets. Nobody worries about the humans who already have. The sovereignty problem is not new. The solution is.

Your Consultant Already Knows Your Competitor's Playbook

The conventional wisdom says incumbents with decades of data will build the best AI agents. The conventional wisdom is wrong in a way that matters.

The Data Advantage Is Not What You Think

Everyone will be able to build an agent that delivers outcomes. When the dust settles and there are hundreds of AI agencies in every vertical, the differentiation will not come from where you expect.

The Five Things That Separate Good AI Agencies From Great Ones

The service layer thesis is attracting founders. The hard part is not the thesis. It is operationalizing it. Here is what you actually need to build, and what matters most is the thing you are least likely to build first.

What an AI Agency Actually Needs to Work

What happens when your software gets so good at a customer's job that it stops being software? The agent-native model is quietly becoming something the industry has never seen: a services business with software economics.

The Service Layer

Agent-native businesses have a defensibility problem. Anyone can wire an LLM to an API. Self-evolving agents that compound customer-specific knowledge over time are the answer. Here is how the retention layer works.

The Retention Layer

When AI agents install software, they inherit every dependency, every transitive trust relationship, and every vulnerability in a chain they never inspect. The software supply chain was already fragile. Autonomous agents are about to stress-test it.

The Supply Chain You Cannot See

AI agents browse billions of web pages daily — but every page is served in a format designed for human eyes. WebTaskBench measures what happens when you fix that.

Does Format Matter? WebTaskBench Results

Why we chose seven intent-level operations over hundreds of debugging primitives, and what that decision says about building infrastructure designed for agents rather than adapted for them.

Seven Methods Is Enough

AI agents are becoming a primary way people interact with the web. If you are a publisher, a product manager, or just someone trying to understand what is happening, this is where to start.

Making Sense of the Agentic Web

Publishers face a binary choice with AI agents: block them entirely or serve them raw HTML at full cost. Neither option is good. There is a third path, and the economics are compelling.

The Publisher's Dilemma: Block, Tolerate, or Cooperate

Every time an AI agent reads a web page, it pays to process tens of thousands of tokens that encode nothing but visual presentation. Across the industry, this hidden tax adds up to billions of dollars a year. Here is where that number comes from.

The Billion Dollar Tax on AI Agents

AI agents browse the web constantly. They also get things wrong constantly. The problem is not the AI. The problem is what we are feeding it.

When AI Reads the Web Wrong

Chrome was designed for humans looking at screens. Plasmate was designed for AI agents reasoning over content. This is the story of why that distinction matters and what it took to build.

Why I'm Building a Browser No Human Will Ever Use

I built the first open source marketing automation platform. A decade later, I am building infrastructure for AI agents. The problems are different. The patterns are identical.

What I Learned Building Mautic That Applies to the Agentic Web

The web has served three consumers: browsers, search engines, and applications. AI agents are the fourth. They have no format, no protocol, and no infrastructure designed for them. This is the most consequential gap in modern web architecture.

The Web's Fourth State

Technical disclosure for the Distributed Encoded Network Signal Exchange (DENSE) protocol - a compact binary protocol for agent-to-agent communication over social media

DENSE Protocol: Defensive Publication

I’ve been considering this heavily myself and so I was appreciative to hear one of the individuals I respect from a technical analysis and market perspective echo similar sentiments surrounding Solana. Raoul...

Pal on Sol

Hard times for a nation to have adopted Bitcoin as their legal tender. Seeing a 60% decline in value can become quite devastating to nation economies at scale. But, buying is buying...

Bukele back to buying bitcoin

Nice to see self-regulation begin to enter the crypto space, even if it comes on the backs of catastrophic failure. While this should not be the end of this process it is...

Proof of Selected Reserves

Binance demonstrates their desire to be open and transparent in their funds held in cold wallets. And much like their maligned counterpart (Tether), we find fairly well-done bookkeeping. While it remains to...

Binance Bank

Seems everyone is into rugs these days. Even those IRL businesses. Here we see an interesting transition…and while I didn’t highlight it to draw it to your attention. I would recommend reading...

Peleton promotes their rug.

Yet another big bank from the Web2 world stepping into the crypto space. Fidelity is a personal favorite of mine and I am excited to see this offering come to fruition. Anyone...

Fee-Free Fidelity Crypto

Now that we are living in a Post-Merge world for the Ethereum blockchain (yah, no more toxic proof of work!) the question arises about the potential choke point on the market held...

Lido lays low

Volatility runs rampant and there are quite a few opinions on the role these fluxes in the market play. Here’s a few of my favorites. "Volatility is the friend of the investor...

Volatility - friend or foe

Sometimes the mere acknowledgement and attempt to discuss a topic is enough to provide market clarity and support. I doubt the UK has all the answers to this situation and the definition...

UK Pumps Crypto

If I were to create a token for an open source community I think there’s a few compelling ways to go about it. However, in order to give a concrete example to...

If I made a Stable Diffusion token

Oh good, I feel safer already. This news article should really not come as any surprise as the increase and interest in the “metaverse” grows. Inevitably every sector is going to ask...

Metapol

Nice to see a drop return to the volatility in BTC…or maybe the real story is the increased volatility in the Nasdaq and S&P 500? Either way, as the markets continue to...

BTC reducing volatility

30% is 30%, and it doesn’t matter how you earn it. If you earn it with an iOS device, Apple wants 30%. I suspect Apple actually wants 1/3 of your soul and...

Apple wants to be your government

It’s amazing to watch how quickly the UK makes adjustments to political offices. Whereas the political campaigns in the United States can unfold for months and involve all manner of mudslinging and...

UK NFTs coming soon?

I just read this article, I Tried the $1,500 Quest Pro and Saw the Best of the Metaverse , and I am struck with the truth found in the author’s opinion and...

Zoom zoom zoom

Optimistic rollups are a type of rollup that uses an on-chain validator to commit data to the mainchain. This validator is responsible for validating the data that is being committed, and if...

Efficiency or Security

If anyone still has questions about the potential for Web3 to supplant Web2 in aspects related to fund-raising, grants, mentors, and the many other aspects of launching a startup…better get with the...

Student becomes the teacher

I’m sure we can all remember where the BTC price was fluctuating in March 2020. And we all remember what happened next. How indicative is the ENV indicator? Let’s wait and see.

Who was buying #BTC in March 2020

Legacies are not always what you anticipate. But more importantly, your legacy is not completed until you die. ”Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the...

Perseverance is usually not easy

Magic Eden made the news lately for their decision to remove royalty enforcement on their platform. But read the article all the way to the end. I think there’s something that hasn’t...

Maligned Magic Eden

Is only a letter away. In this thought I would suggest the better way to address and resolve the current hotly debated issue of royalty fees for creators (and specifically crypto NFT)...

The answer to royalties

Okay, I know we’re supposed to get all excited every time we have a new mainstream platform incorporating NFT and crypto technologies into their product. But I think it’s important to keep...

Reddit and Snoo, the avatar

Optimistic rollups are a type of second-layer scaling solution for blockchain networks that allow for increased transactional throughput /without/ sacrificing “security” or decentralization. Optimistic rollups work by batching transactions off-chain into a...

Optimistically rolled-up

In order to be an effective leader in the community, it is important to have a clear vision and be able to communicate that vision to others in a way that inspires...

Community leadership

An ETF by another name? This article suggests that major reputable investment firms (Morgan Stanely, etc) are still heavily investing in crypto-based asset classes. Currently ETPs are the “flavor of the month”...

Crypto ETPs in the wild

The Apollo Moon mission not only demonstrated the feasibility of human spaceflight but also spurred advances in a number of key technologies. The Apollo program was designed to send humans to the...

Apollo moon mission tech ripples

Well well well if it isn’t good ole’ Wally World weighing in once again on the value of crypto. Although this news headline should come as no surprise for those of us...

Walmart continues wading into crypto

Don’t fool yourself, digital identities are the future. It’s not a question of “if” but “when” and before you start thinking that a decentralized approach is the most likely outcome; consider news...

The digital ID race

Zero-knowledge proofs are a type of cryptography that allows one party to prove to another party that they know a value x, without conveying any other information about x. There are several...

Zero knowledge proof types and application

Why are community organizations important? Community organizations are important for many reasons. It can help people feel connected to their community, it can provide support and resources, and it can advocate for...

Community orgs in the real world

This post courtesy of SpaceX and their recent YouTube livestreams. In a world that is constantly trying to get our attention, it is easy to get lost in the shuffle and forget...

Finding inspiration through intentionality

Sometimes it’s the indirect approach which demonstrates your point.

Tweet timing

I love this quote. It comes up from time to time and I always like to take a moment and look around and consider…what is growing at that rate today? Hmm…… Hint:...

Are you thinking what I am?

The recent headline news of Kanye, excuse me, Ye buying Parler (yeah, it’s that social media app you remember vaguely from the role it played in the Capitol riots) is going to...

When free speech isnt

In a somewhat unsurprising article, but perhaps informative viewpoint to be reinforced, a recent study released studying global wealth managers has identified the risk appetite for cryptocurrencies by high net-worth individuals. In...

Maximum risk on investing

There is evidence that the U.S. streaming market is maturing and slowing down, which suggests that overall TV revenue is likely near a peak. Even after media conglomerates work through the current...

If a streaming service has no subscribers

Things aren’t always what they seem when it comes to product demos. Perhaps this was part of the Apple magic when products were announced for immediate availability . Nowdays more and more...

Tracking your own legs

The internet is a wealth of information. You can find out how to do just about anything with a few clicks. But, this can also be a bad thing. If you're not...

Information overload

The concept of a digital Asian currency is nothing new, and in fact, China has been leading the way in testing a centralized stablecoin. In this report from Bejiing we hear of...

USD vs Everyone

I guess it was inevitable after seeing all the press that Visa has been getting recently for their various crypto initiatives. Today we hear the other behemoth speak up. Mastercard’s Executive Vice...

Mastercard makes moves

There are legacies all around us. We all have legacies, including you. Yeah, I know what you're thinking...but you do. Read on. Here's a hint: A legacy can take many forms. It...

The legacy of civilizations

I can’t help but consider history when reading articles like this. I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that NFT artwork can play an important role in preserving cultural artifacts, especially...

Wartime NFTs

Everyone grimaces just a teensy bit when they talk about Tether and the USDT stablecoin. For better or worse Tether has a rather maligned history. All manner of suspect behavior, unbacked funds,...

Tether tries T-Bills

The latest “unicorn” (pun intended) to capitalize on their web3 foundations has raised $165 million in a Series B round of funding; and a valuation of $1.6bn. Sorry, what? I know we...

Valuations and raises in the new web3 world

Today (Thurs, Oct 13, 2022) we get another CPI (core price index) report. I heard an interesting blurb on a podcast yesterday suggesting that until the general public has completely lost interest...

Yet Another Asset Class

It seems like not a day passes that we don’t get another lawsuit in the crypto space. I think the part most fascinating to me is that most of these suits involve...

Lawsuits Lawsuits Everwhere

It never seems to fail, big business chasing the retail crowd on a delay. I suppose there might be some value in the lagging indicator. Perhaps we can begin to assume the...

CNN chasing the tide

We all recall the heavy push for migration from the dominant cloud server market to Google Cloud. We've all seen the leadership changes and the various initiatives seeking a foothold in the...

Google introduces risk for revenue

This article could have been a tweet....or less. So, yeah, Google searches now show ETH balances. Check it out. Oh, and probably worth mentioning, Etherscan appears to be the Wikipedia of web3...

Searching expands

Here's a quick thought for you. Well, first a quick task followed by a quick thought. Okay, first, select your favorite search engine and search the word: Legacy.

Legacy

We all know those people. The ones who balked at your advice, in spite of your urgent pleading and maybe in some cases actual begging.

Woulda Coulda Shoulda

If you're into the stock market or day trading like the countless others recovering from years trapped inside with no outlet for entertainment, then you're more than likely aware about the recent news surrounding Netflix.

Netflix & Chill

I'm most certainly giving away both my age as well as at least a small insight into my former television watching self when I write the following sentence.

Weakest Link

No, I'm not referring to the controversial, seemingly-always-in-the-news cryptocurrency, Ripple. Instead, I'm thinking much more deeply in this moment.

Ripples

King Solomon once made the statement, there's nothing new under the sun. Widely regarded as one of the wisest men in all of history there's an element of honest believability in each of his short sayings.

Charon's Ferry

I doubt you will be reading this post and not be aware of the metaverse. Nor could you be ignorant of the hype surrounding this utopian digital world we are all going to be blissfully living within.

Digital Real Estate

This is not a new concept, today's bonus thought is merely an amalgamation of a couple different thoughts shared with me. And I can't stop thinking about them.

Non-Fungible Humans

Questions that ask for a specific number of answers or bullet points are always harder for me to answer because at times it can be quite difficult to narrow down a veritable...

3 Success Factors of World-Class Marketers

Learn how to use GitHub as a CMS using server-side rendering from Next.js

Using GitHub as a CMS

It's been a long year & a lot has happened so I wanted to recap it all

2021 in review

The Next.js config file feels underutilized. Here's how it could be better

Improving the Next.js config

This site has been long overdue a re-design & fresh lick of paint, so here's how I did it.

👋🏻 Hello World

"In my experience, criticism will only be received by people if there's a high degree of trust. If there's trust, and people know that you care about them, then their self-esteem is...

Criticism welcomed?

Recently I felt compelled to re-visit my series of thoughts on the topic of the . This inevitably lead to my realization a to continue studying and predicting the next era in...

Survival of the Fittest

832 days. I had to for the exact length of time because mentally it felt like only yesterday. 832 days since I wrote the in my short series on . So many...

Exploring the Progression of Modern Software (Part 4)

In the most uncertain of times, trust becomes the most desirable of refuges.

Just a thought

"When people honor each other, there is a trust established that leads to synergy, interdependence, and deep respect. Both parties make decisions and choices based on what is right, what is best,...

Business meet Customer.

If you haven't heard more than you could possibly care to hear about Tiktok already then here's one more thought for you to consider. There's a massive, global battle ongoing right now....

The True TikTok Tussle

"Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation...

Wasting Time

I completely missed the first football game of the season for the New England Patriots. This might sound surprising if I had shared this information only a year ago, but in 2020...

Pre-season Training

“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.” ― Pythagoras

Coming Soon.

I have a new smartphone. One that I am particularly excited to possess. Before you start wondering the make and model of this latest advancement in technology let me share some of...

Digital Minimalism Applied

I know there's been at least a dozen times ( and that's being highly conservative ) when I have mentioned the value of listening. There is an almost infinite amount of thoughts...

The value of talking

Balance is such a fascinating topic. I'm typically the type of person who loves black and white answers. I like knowing with confidence whether a direction is right or wrong, an answer...