Over the past twenty years, I've run marketing and technology across manufacturers and e-commerce companies. Four brands, B2B and DTC, physical products meeting digital infrastructure. I make technology decisions every week: which tools to keep, which to prune, and what to build in-house. I've managed 300-plus application stacks, negotiated enterprise contracts, and watched millions go to tools nobody used. I know what bad software decisions cost because I've lived with the consequences.
AI is continuously changing the software game.
In 2023, I tried building a custom tool with AI assistance. It failed spectacularly. I'm no developer. I got frustrated and gave up. In late 2025, I tried the project again, and it worked in a weekend. As someone that's always been around development but never been a developer, I was hooked. This is the golden age for builders willing to challenge what we all think we know.
And I'm watching the same thing happen everywhere: leaders signing three-year SaaS contracts for capabilities an agent could handle tomorrow, or building in-house when a $20/month tool does it better. The discipline changed faster than anyone's instincts. I want people making good decisions and spending their company's money well. That's why I built the B4 framework.
This site practices what it preaches.
Everything here lives in one built visual world, the Vessel: copper line art, warm engraving, one glowing light per scene. I faced my own build-or-buy question on the identity and built. And the work itself runs on a crew of ten AI systems, the Fleet, each one owning a trade and signing what it ships. Every byline on this site tells you who made what, human and machine alike. That transparency is the operating model, shown in public.
What I'm building
The engine
B4 Index
1,603 categories scored on five dimensions. The independent tool I wished existed when I stared at a 305-app stack.
Free to browse · full access with Pro
The book
Build or Buy
The complete framework, the methodology behind the scoring, and worked examples for navigating the shift.
The world
The Vessel
The built visual world this work lives in, and the argument for building your own instead of buying the template.
The crew
The Fleet
The ten AI systems that run this operation. Each one owns a trade, runs a real pipeline, and signs its work.
The newsletter
The Build Report
Category shifts, new scores, and what's changing in enterprise software, from the operator's seat.
I'm not a consultant theorizing from the sidelines. I make these decisions at a company that ships physical products every day.
The framework, the book, the index: all of it comes from that work. I post regularly on LinkedIn about AI-assisted development and the build-vs-buy calls I'm making in real time. The best way to start is the Build Report signup below.