How to be more ambitious

How to be more ambitious
11 minutes by Felix Rieseberg

AI tools are more capable than most people use them for. To get the most out of them, Felix suggests thinking bigger across four areas: raise your goals to focus on outcomes rather than tasks, push for expert-level depth using real methods and tools, draw on unexpected fields to find fresh angles, and challenge your own assumptions. He argues the biggest barrier is usually believing something ambitious is even worth trying.

The hidden cost of building integrations in-house
sponsored by Nango

The first integration takes a few weeks. The tenth isn't any faster, because the work doesn't compound: every API brings its own auth, rate limits, and breaking changes. This guide provides engineering leaders with a practical way to weigh build vs. buy for product integrations, including when building in-house is still appropriate.

On the death of Amazon’s writing culture
9 minutes by Steve Huynh

Amazon built its culture around written memos that forced clear thinking before decisions were made. AI now lets people skip that thinking and generate polished documents without doing the work. This erodes trust between colleagues and leads to poor decisions. Steve says the fix is simple: let AI handle low-stakes reversible work, but require real human writing for anything that matters.

Building a second-wave AI business
10 minutes by Seth Godin

AI cost-cutting is a race to the bottom. The real opportunity is building something that creates new value, not just trims expenses. The best bootstrapped AI businesses combine a specific data stack, a built-in network effect, and a real solution for people with resources and a pressing problem. Sell into a crisis that already exists rather than trying to create one.

You should all be asking way more questions
4 minutes by Sean Goedecke

Asking questions helps prevent misunderstandings, uncover design flaws, and save time during software development. Sean points out that by checking details and imagining how a plan will work in practice, engineers can identify missing dependencies early. This is especially important when working with AI agents, which often make design mistakes. Don’t assume others know what they’re doing—ask questions to understand the plan and make better decisions.

Paying for nothing to happen
18 minutes by Kevin Goldsmith

Budgeting for security, reliability, and compliance is hard because success means nothing goes wrong, making it look the same as never having spent the money. Kevin shares four price tags that help making the case: what deals require, what insurers charge, what regulators demand, and what your worst day would actually cost. These numbers already exist, you just have to find and add them up. Spend in proportion to what failure would cost, and make that cost visible before someone else decides the number for you.

And the most popular article from the last issue was:

• When execution becomes unhealthy