Software Lead Weekly

How the Smartest Founders Are Winning in AI - Interview With Jason Lemkin (Video)
76 minutes read.

MFM is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. Shaan and Sam always ask great questions while also having a lot of fun. This episode with Jason Lemkin (the brilliant guy behind SaaStr) doesn't disappoint. It's worth listening to "The incumbents are dying" (15:15) to understand the upsides in getting speed and efficiency, as we're still too early to predict how (or if) big companies will reaccelerate their revenue growth.

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This Is Unironically What It Feels Like to Run a Startup
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. Nerds are the best!

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Going on the Offensive With Creative Strategy
6 minutes read.

Roger Martin argues that new ideas and innovations should be pitched with an offensive approach rather than defending your stand based on past performance and behavior. Go deeper into why changing the status quo is critical and, if things go well, where the upside can change the business. He writes it so well: "Greek philosopher and father of data analytics, Aristotle, pointed out the limits of the technique he created. Data analytics is only helpful in predicting the future when we are fully confident that that future cannot be different than the past. Otherwise, according to its creator, data analytics is a deeply flawed methodology that should not be used. [...] When analytics ask creatives to prove a new idea in advance analytically, they are asking the creatives to do something that has never been done in the history of the world — good luck with that! [...] Have a competition of the logic of your innovation versus the status quo, not a competition between your idea and a logical fallacy."

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The Hidden Metric That Determines AI Product Success
9 minutes read.

If you're building AI products, this post by Assaf Elovic and the CAIR framework introduced there is a must-read and worth sharing with your teammates: "CAIR [framework] fundamentally changes how we evaluate AI readiness. Instead of only asking “Is the AI accurate enough?”, we should also ask “Is the CAIR high enough for adoption?” [...] For product leaders, this insight is liberating. You don’t need to wait for perfect AI to create successful products. An 85% accurate AI in a high-CAIR design will consistently outperform a 95% accurate AI in a low-CAIR design in terms of user adoption and satisfaction."

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Ugly Code and Dumb Things
4 minutes read.

"Here [where the product is not the code], speed and iteration matter more than beautiful code or reusability, because success hinges on shipping something people want. [...] it took me years to fully realize what was happening here: reusability is not that important when you’re building an application, but it’s crucial when you’re building a library or framework." -- Armin Ronacher shares a great insight. What are you optimizing for?

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Two Questions Decide Your Fate at Work
3 minutes read.

Simple and effective practice to make sure you're treating your energy with the same care you treat your time, if not more: "What gave me energy this week? What drained it?" This one is spot on: "A manager who never asks these questions misses the early warning signs of burnout. An employee who ignores them will eventually drift, stall, or leave. The audit catches the truth before it turns into a resignation letter."

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AI Coding Tools Are Perhaps Our New Terminal Emulators
4 minutes read.

"I've been thinking that perhaps the next form of the terminal emulator will be an agent with a library of standard prompts. These standard prompts essentially function as shell scripts because they can compose and execute commands or perform activities via MCP, and there's nearly no limit to what they can do." -- It's like we talk in slang to a machine, knowing it will really understand us.

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@mbrandolph: Building Netflix taught me that your first idea is rarely your best idea. We started mailing DVDs, not streaming movies. Stay married to the problem you’re solving, not the solution you THINK will solve it.

@levie: The biggest AI Agent opportunities are going to be in categories of work where there could be a 10X or 100X increase in demand if the cost of executing certain tasks went down dramatically.