Guide
The three receipts
Fifteen cold emails carrying evidence got two replies. Thirty carrying claims got none. The framework that came out of the split, including the step where findings that fail verification get deleted.
Measurement · 6 min
Guides and notes
Writing
Essay
The Stranger in the Women's App
I drove four AI personas through Sola and one of them found a man standing in the women-only part of the app, on a screen I had looked at a hundred times.
AI and building · 9 min
Essay
I got bored and rebuilt Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
One prompt, one file, a working game by the end of the evening, and an honest account of what the model got badly wrong.
AI and building · 4 min
Essay
A marketing team of one
The actual machine behind a marketing function run by one person, and why the hard part was never the tools.
AI and building · 3 min
Guide
How to tell if your ads agency is doing a good job: five checks you can run yourself
Five checks a non-marketer can run in an hour. They work on me as well as on whoever has the account now.
Hiring and agencies · 7 min
Guide
How to check if a company is running Google ads (and whether the ads are measured)
How to see what any company is advertising, and the two public checks that show whether those ads are measured at all.
Google Ads · 6 min
Guide
How to take over a Google Ads account without breaking it
The order I work in when I inherit someone else's account: secure ownership, snapshot, read the history, fix measurement, only then touch campaigns.
Google Ads · Hiring and agencies · 6 min
Guide
The Google Ad Grant, and the rule that quietly kills most accounts
Ten thousand dollars a month of free Search ads, and the background rule that quietly deactivates most of the accounts that get it.
Non-profits · Google Ads · 3 min
Essay
Not using AI is a luxury
Every argument against using AI, run against the actual papers rather than the headlines about them.
AI and building · 12 min
Essay
I hired a human because of AI
I spend most of the working day inside a coding agent. Part of the honest reason I made my first hire was that.
AI and building · 5 min
Also here
Essays on place and travel
Longer, researched pieces on how places become destinations, and on the travel industry. Separate from the work above.