Insights

The hidden gold rush: How AI is transforming boring businesses

While venture capitalists throw billions at the next social media unicorn, the real money is being made in the most unsexy corner of the economy. Plumbing, heating and cooling, electrical work, landscaping, and pest control generate over $500 billion in annual revenue across the US alone. Add Europe's 400,000+ plumbing and heating installation enterprises, and you're looking at a trillion-dollar global market. We're talking about 32 million businesses across the US and Europe employing millions of people.

The disappearing experience pyramid: How do you become senior without being junior?

Think of a traditional software development team. At the bottom, junior developers write simple functions, fix bugs, and learn coding patterns by building basic features. In the middle, senior developers architect systems and review code while mentoring the juniors. At the top, tech leads and principal engineers make architectural decisions and solve the most complex technical challenges. This pyramid structure has defined career progression for decades. AI is quietly demolishing it from the bottom up.

How AI-first product studios are unlocking hidden value through hyper specific software

There's a gold rush happening in the most unglamorous corners of the economy. While headlines fixate on flashy AI chatbots and art generators, smart builders are targeting data-heavy, workflow-intensive niches that are screaming for automation. Think regulatory compliance, logistics paperwork, medical billing, accounting reconciliation. These overlooked domains run on piles of data and tedious human effort. They also suffer costly errors when things slip through the cracks.

The budget estimation paradox: the unsolved challenge in agile methodology

Imagine you're planning a road trip from Amsterdam to Rome. You ask your travel agent, "I want to visit three countries and see some historic sites along the way. What will this cost exactly?" The agent can estimate fuel, hotels, and basic expenses, but they know the real journey will unfold differently. Will you discover that charming village in Switzerland that wasn't on any map? Extend your stay in Florence because the art museums captivated you? Take a detour to avoid construction, only to stumble upon a medieval festival? The most memorable trips aren't the ones that stick rigidly to the original itinerary.

Realistic ROI for digital product development: where TAM/SAM/SOM meets the financial forecast

Ever wondered why so many software projects fail? It has a lot to do with the inability to realistically estimate the realistic value versus the cost to reach the objective. You've probably seen it before: a promising project gets green-lit with enthusiastic projections, only to drain budgets and deliver disappointing results. Here's the thing: most software development ROI calculations are like trying to navigate with two different maps of the same city. One map shows you the big picture from satellite view (top-down market analysis), while the other shows you street-level details (bottom-up financial forecasts). The problem? These maps rarely match up, leaving you lost somewhere between ambitious dreams and harsh realities.

Esoteric Principles for Entrepreneurs

Every startup founder and tech entrepreneur is flooded with business books, productivity frameworks, and Huberman protocols for optimal performance. But what if the most powerful edge isn't found in conventional approaches but in esoteric principles that sound too strange to work? I used to be one of these people and have read all of the literature all founders and techies have in their library. From 'The $100 Dollar Startup' and 'The Lean Startup' to 'From Zero to One' and 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things', all of them have been valuable in their own way but did they really make a difference? Or was it just some form of procrastination? In the last 12 months, I've traded startup theory for esoteric mental models, and they've moved the needle more than any business book ever did.

People don’t buy your presence. They buy your standard.

People don’t buy your presence. They buy your standard. Guus Hiddink, the legendary Dutch football coach, transformed South Korea's national team into World Cup semifinalists in 2002. He's not on the field during matches. He's not defending or scoring goals. Yet his influence drives every play, every decision, every moment of strategic brilliance. How? Through preparation, standards, and systems that work without his constant presence.Most people think they need someone hovering over their project, checking every detail and being available for every question. They want the security of knowing their leader is "in the trenches" with them. But here's what they're really buying: not your time, but your guarantee of quality and pace of delivery.

The MVP Playbook for B2B Software Ideas

You have a B2B software idea that keeps you up at night. The kind that makes you think "this could actually work" while you're stuck in another pointless meeting or wrestling with clunky enterprise tools. But here's where most founders get stuck: How do you go from idea to paying customers without building the wrong thing, burning through savings, or spending six months on a product nobody wants?The brutal truth? Most B2B software ideas do not die because they're bad, but because founders skip the validation step and jump straight into building. They confuse "this solves my problem" with "this solves a problem people will pay for."

How Eli5’s AI Roadmap Turns Confusion into Business Value

As the commercial lead at Eli5, I’ve seen how AI can be both a source of excitement and confusion for corporates. That’s why we created the Eli5 Automation & AI Roadmap—a productized service to turn AI confusion into business value in just four weeks. I remember sitting in a boardroom with a client’s leadership team. The CTO was eager to “do something with AI,” but the CFO was skeptical about ROI, and the operations lead was worried about data quality. This wasn’t unique—almost every corporate we meet faces the same pain points: unclear strategy, siloed experiments, and stalled pilots. That’s when I realized: what businesses need isn’t more AI hype, but a clear, actionable plan.

Top 25 digital product studios [2025]

A product studio is a unique kind of agency that operates as a full-stack solution for product development. Unlike traditional agencies or design firms, product studios are deeply involved in the entire lifecycle of a product. From ideation and design to engineering, testing, and scaling. These studios don't just deliver designs or code; they deliver fully functioning products ready to thrive in the market.

Digital Product Studio Map

Plug and play: Connect your data to an LLM with Needle

​​Since the introduction of the Model Context Protocol (MCP)*, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to connect company data to LLMs like GPT and Claude. My goal was to find a way to seamlessly link a wide variety of data sources (Google Drive, Notion, local storage, SQL) to an LLM. And I think I’ve found a potential winner.