Canadian Tire is a Canadian institution. It is the quintessential Canadian retailer. It was my favorite place to go to when I was a kid. One of the things I loved about it was Canadian Tire money. It consisted of coupons which resemble real banknotes and were used to save on your next purchase. You … Continue reading Programmable Loyalty →

Why addressable markets aren’t what they used to be If you work in a startup and are meeting with investors, you are obligated to include a slide on your total addressable market, also lovingly referred to as the TAM. The TAM isn’t just reserved for startups of course. The notion of the size of the … Continue reading New Markets →

Photo by Zé Ferrari Careto on Unsplash Technical debt is a well defined problem today. It is the result of prioritizing speedy delivery over perfect code. When you want to go fast, you have to take shortcuts. Over time, these shortcuts accumulate and cause slowdowns. When this happens, you need to invest to fix it. … Continue reading Organizational Debt →

We finally entered the first year of the twentieth first century. It took 20 years for the new century to arrive. There will be a clear line in people’s minds, the old world and the new one. Even things that occurred 2 or 3 years ago seem completely distant and less relevant. In the business … Continue reading Past the point of no return →

Certain principles about learning just make sense. My favorite one comes from the meme king himself.  it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to … Continue reading Solving at different levels of the stack →

It was the annual spring tradition. We would dress up in our traditional Greek clothing and freeze our little butts off walking down Jean-Talon. The  Greek independence day parade in Montreal was a staple of my childhood. The event was the celebration of the country and also served as a reminder of our roots for … Continue reading Overcoming Fear →

I’ll be honest. When I started my consulting firm, I had no idea what consulting was. We just thought it would be cool to help companies figure out their strategic challenges, particularly when it comes to the massive technological shifts occurring.  Now after 6 years, I think we’ve figured it out somewhat even though we’re … Continue reading Pattern Recognition →

“Crypto is libertarian, AI is communist” Peter Thiel In my last post, I wrote about the long-term potential of decentralization. It was a romantic ideal of the future. While I still believe this to be true, the future is not written. As it stands today, it feels like we are headed in the opposite direction, … Continue reading The fallacy of decentralization →

Earlier this week, I was on the phone with my bank for over an hour. When I finally spoke to the agent, they told me that my identity would need to be verified by someone in the bank branch that knew me personally in order to complete the transaction. I have to admit, I was … Continue reading The inevitability of decentralization →

I love my job. I get to see how technology impacts entire industries from the front lines. The companies we work with all have one thing in common, they have increasingly more degrees of freedom in which to operate. By this I mean that they have dramatically more strategic options available mainly due to software. … Continue reading Degrees of Freedom →