Profile 8 min read

Lessons from Pierre Lamond

Pierre Lamond helped build the semiconductor industry at Fairchild and National Semiconductor before joining Sequoia Capital. His operating and investing rules demanded technical command, disciplined costs, and ambition for huge markets across generations of industrial hardware.
Digest 7 min read

Daily Digest - 2026-05-13

As agents absorb search, purchasing, and interface work, familiar sources of differentiation begin to erode. Durable value shifts toward original judgment, embedded domain expertise, and the difficult fieldwork required to own and improve real workflows.
Digest 7 min read

Daily Digest - 2026-05-12

Rising inference constraints make operational discipline essential. Evaluations can route work to cheaper models, long contexts can replace many fine-tunes, and rapid custom builds can clarify requirements before teams adopt maintainable platforms, all within a layered security architecture.
1 min read

Seven Powers in the AI Era — Series Index

AI compresses capability, erodes shallow defenses, and raises the value of operating discipline. The sequence tests each classic source of power under these conditions, exposes false moats, and concludes with a practical audit for strategic decisions.
2 min read

Seven Powers in the AI Era Series #10: A Practical AI Power Audit

A useful AI strategy begins with actual workflows, then tests whether each initiative changes economics or creates defensibility. By separating adoption from power and scoring impact independently, operators can identify compounding advantages, decaying protection, and expensive distractions.
2 min read

Seven Powers in the AI Era Series #9: Fake Moats AI Will Expose

AI weakens advantages built on excess headcount, integration pain, information asymmetry, and generic content. Operators must distinguish temporary protection from durable power, then compete on judgment, trust, domain expertise, and systems customers would still choose freely.
2 min read

Seven Powers in the AI Era Series #8: Process Power: The Moat Hiding in How the Work Gets Done

When access to AI tools becomes universal, advantage moves into operating discipline: evaluation, review, feedback, routing, and accumulated judgment. These unglamorous systems shorten learning cycles and make reliable execution far harder for competitors to copy.
2 min read

Seven Powers in the AI Era Series #7: Cornered Resource: Scarcity Still Matters, But It Moved

Scarcity in AI shifts away from routine output toward privileged resources that improve products or economics. Useful data, rights, trusted access, judgment, and domain expertise become defensible only when they enable outcomes competitors cannot easily reproduce.

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