The Job Has Changed
AI can run your competitor benchmarks and market sizing. Any intern with Claude can do that now. The question is: what do you do with it?
The hard part was never the analysis. It's the judgment calls: knowing which segments matter, what the data isn't telling you, and when to ignore the spreadsheet and trust your gut.
And now that AI has made building things the easy part too, the same rule applies twice. Anyone can generate. Knowing what good looks like — which insight survives a CMO's cross-examination, which story a creative team will actually work from — that's the twenty-year part. People are starting to call this profile the "systems thinker" or the "deep generalist." From the inside, it's always been one job: notice the system, find the gap, build the bridge.
And now that AI has made building things the easy part too, the same rule applies twice. Anyone can generate. Knowing what good looks like — which insight survives a CMO's cross-examination, which story a creative team will actually work from — that's the twenty-year part. I build with the machines and judge with my name on the work. Because it is.
My AI "Oh Wow" Moment (Dec 2022)
Running consumer research for a music royalty startup. 50+ open-ended survey responses. The usual qual analysis grind.
Fed them into ChatGPT on a whim. Asked for a summary, an investor pitch, and (as a joke) a Barack Obama speech selling the product. It nailed the synthesis. The Obama speech ended with: "Let's make some beautiful music together, folks."
That's when I got it. AI will do whatever you ask. The judgment is in knowing what to ask, and what to do with the answer.
I've also been writing code since the mid-'90s — first steering Logo's little turtle around a screen, then BASIC, then C++ back when the AP exam still ran on it, then Java, and eventually the languages researchers actually use, STATA and SPSS. So when people ask when I became a builder: before I became anything else. The AI tools didn't turn me into one. They just removed the excuses.
Started at Monitor Group. M&A, growth strategy, insights research across consumer, fintech, edtech. Then a year inside Chiat\Day and two years of media-and-tech deals at a boutique investment bank. Built QC Strategy in the gap I'd just lived from both sides — Monitor rigor, Chiat\Day creativity, quantitative work in service of creative, before that was a category. These days: Partner & Managing Director at RedSky Strategy, based in LA, building in a new gap. Also in there somewhere: a 2011 Emmy (Golf on CBS, technical team, long story).
Also: dad, surfer, kombucha brewer.
