For product leaders on complex B2B platforms
The operating manual I wish I'd had before
I've spent 13 years building products in payments, telecom and other industries where a bank, a carrier or a regulator can say no. I write down what I learned so you can get up to speed faster than I did.
Written from my own calls, mistakes included.
13+ years building B2B products, making calls under uncertainty, and learning what "owning it" means. I owned a nine-figure ARR product portfolio at Twilio, a corporate venture P&L as GM, founded a VC-backed automation startup, and scaled cross-functional orgs across 10+ countries and timezones. Same instincts. New decisions and blind spots every time.
Who is writing this →Where are you right now?
I just joined a new company
Earn trust, learn the domain and set direction in 60 days.
I need to learn an industry fast
The main players and ten primitives, one industry at a time.
We just acquired a platform
Decide what to kill, keep, migrate or share, and in what order.
We're going AI native
Change how the team ships, works and serves customers, and prove it.
01
Field Guides
Each guide walks through one industry the way I'd explain it to a new teammate: who the big players are, where the money goes, which rules actually matter and what usually goes wrong.
19 guides in 6 areas
All Field Guides →B2B payments
B2B payments: real-time payments and open banking
Last updated October 2026
B2B payments
B2B payments: stablecoins and blockchain payments
Last updated October 2026
Identity and trust
Agent identity and delegated access: how AI agents act for people
Last updated October 2026
Identity and trust
Login and access for apps: authentication and authorization
Last updated October 2026
02
Primitives
Ten building blocks I keep running into, whatever the industry. Once you know them, a new domain feels a lot less foreign.
10 primitives in 3 themes
Explore the primitives →What you keep track of
- 01 Entity and identityWhat is the unit of record, and how do we know it is the same one?
- 02 State and lifecycleWhat states exist, and what moves an entity between them?
- 03 System of record and ledgerWho owns the truth, and how do systems reconcile?
Who sets the rules
- 04 Rules and policyWhat logic decides outcomes, and who can change it?
- 05 Effective datingWhich version of the rule applied at that moment?
- 07 Networks and counterpartiesWho sits between us and the outcome, and what do they want?
- 08 Regulatory layeringJurisdiction × activity × entity type: is it a license or a certification?
When things go wrong
- 06 Interfaces and standardsWhat format and protocol do counterparties speak?
- 09 Exceptions and reversalsWhat goes wrong, and how is it undone?
- 10 Liability allocationWhen it fails, who pays?
03
Playbooks
For the big moments that come with the job, like a new role, an acquisition or a push to go AI native. Phase by phase, with the checklists I'd want next to me.
5 playbooks
All playbooks →Running an agent product: quality, evals and trust
In about 90 days of owning an AI agent: read its traces until you know how it fails, turn those failures into a test set and release gate, ship model and prompt changes safely, make it ask, undo and hand off well, and set a weekly quality review.
Last updated October 2026
Your first 60 days in a cross-cutting product role
For a senior product person with no product or team of their own: get the mandate and the sponsor clear, map the journey with its owners and their metrics, get the owning teams to fix one handoff customers feel, and put the outcome into the planning cycle by day 60.
Last updated October 2026
Your first 60 days leading product on a complex platform
For a new head of product on a payments, telco, security, identity or AI platform: learn the domain, diagnose the team and the product, act at once only where you must, and commit to a plan by day 60 without breaking what works.
Last updated October 2026
Becoming AI native: how your team ships, works and serves customers
For a product leader asked to make a regulated platform team AI native: measure first, then change how code ships, how internal work is reviewed and what customers see, in that order, with outcome metrics, real oversight and partner sign-off.
Last updated October 2026
Integrating a platform after an acquisition
What to do with the products after you buy a platform company: sort every product and component into kill, keep independent, migrate or shared services, sequence the work, keep customers and revenue, and clear the licences, banks and registrations that slow regulated deals.
Last updated October 2026
Stories
Decisions I made for real, what I was weighing at the time and how they played out. Names are changed.
All stories →There is a problem you're facing and would like some input.
Send me a real situation, not the abstraction. I answer most messages within a week.
Send me a message →