The Archive · Practice · 2023–present
Story & Brand
The scarce skill in the AI bubble
Here’s what four bubbles taught me: the constraint moves.
In 2008, building software was expensive, so engineering was the moat. In the hardware years, manufacturing was. In crypto, capital was. Now AI writes competent code for anyone with twenty dollars a month, and the constraint has moved again. It moved to attention.
Every bubble I’ve worked through was won by the best story, not the best technology. Zynga out-distributed studios with better games. Fitbit outsold devices with better sensors. The crypto projects that survived had communities, not whitepapers. The pattern is not subtle.
So while everyone else adds another model to their stack, I spent the last few years learning the other half: directing, shooting, editing, building a channel, running a studio. Product and engineering get you a working app. Story and brand get you users. I don’t know another founder betting on that combination as hard as I am.
If you’ve built something good that nobody is using, this machine is the reason. Get in touch.
