Essays
My essays explore strategy, history and technology's impact on company building
The strategic importance of startups for Canada's economic future
Aug 30, 2024
The strategic importance of startups for Canada's economic future
Reasons to be optimistic about technology
Nov 22, 2023
Will technology save humanity or kill us all? The recent discourse seems to be bifurcating in two violently different directions.
Farewell
Jun 22, 2023
After 8 great years at The PNR, I’ve decided it’s time to move on. This was obviously not an easy decision to make but I could not be happier to be leaving at a time where the company is in great shape and that the future is bright.
I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that
Mar 26, 2023
Why exponential curves are hard to understand
Reflections on the past year
Jan 02, 2023
This past year has been a fun one. I met a bunch of cool new people, spent time in the mountains with friends, had fun at work and enjoyed life with my wife.
Brainbox: Solving Big Ass Problems
Dec 16, 2022
Brainbox AI. The company is at the forefront of the climate tech revolution and trying to solve one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, the built environment.
The number one rule of advice
Apr 10, 2022
When asked for advice, I have one important rule. Don’t listen to me. Don’t take any of this seriously. I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. This sounds like an obvious disclaimer yet, I’ve seen many situations where smart leade...
Thinking in cycles
Feb 20, 2022
What do North Korea, the nuclear bomb and the United Nations all have in common? There are direct consequences of the Second World War. To say that I have an obsession with that period of history is an understatement. World War Two is fascinating on...
Machine Intermediation
Jan 22, 2022
I got my first job at my father’s grocery store when I was 10. The pay wasn’t that good, there wasn’t any ha! I got to keep a roof over my head (or so I was told). It was a good local grocery store. My dad knew almost all the customers by name...
How to improve the Quebec healthcare system
Jan 03, 2022
(version française plus bas) There’s something that's been gnawing at me and I just need to get off my chest. The Quebec healthcare system needs a reboot. As a Quebec citizen, I’m extremely lucky and proud to have access to free healthcare. I...
Starting Strategy | Execution and the future of strategy
Dec 19, 2021
This is part 5 of a series on strategy fundamentals and how the concept will evolve. Here are the previous posts in case you missed it. Part 1 | Starting Strategy Part 2 | Designing Sustainability Part 3 | Competition and Ecosystem...
Starting Strategy | Playing to Win
Oct 31, 2021
This is part 4 of a series on strategy fundamentals and how the concept will evolve. Here are the previous posts in case you missed it. Part 1 | Starting Strategy Part 2 | Designing Sustainability Part 3 | Competition and Ecosystem...
Starting Strategy | Competition and Ecosystems
Oct 10, 2021
This is part 3 of a series on strategy fundamentals and how the concept will evolve. Here are the previous posts in case you missed it. Part 1 | Starting Strategy Part 2 | Designing Sustainability Competitive advantage is one of th...
Starting Strategy | Designing Sustainability
Aug 22, 2021
Photo by Sofia on Unsplash This is part 2 of a series on strategy fundamentals and how the concept will evolve. Here’s the previous post in case you missed it. Part 1 | Starting Strategy Every year, a curious phenomenon occurs. Many manage...
Starting Strategy
Jul 25, 2021
This is part of a short series on strategy, its fundamentals and how the concept has evolved in today’s world Strategy is one of the most used words in the business world and yet still feels remarkably nascent. There is no single agreed upon def...
Programmable Loyalty
Jun 20, 2021
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 banknote...
New Markets
May 23, 2021
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...
Organizational Debt
May 16, 2021
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, y...
Past the point of no return
May 02, 2021
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 complete...
Solving at different levels of the stack
Apr 11, 2021
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 b...
Overcoming Fear
Mar 28, 2021
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 cele...
Pattern Recognition
Mar 21, 2021
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 occurrin...
The fallacy of decentralization
Feb 28, 2021
“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 stand...
The inevitability of decentralization
Feb 14, 2021
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 transactio...
Degrees of Freedom
Jan 31, 2021
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 dra...
Evergreen Skills
Jan 17, 2021
I’ve come to realize that growing certain skills are more important than functional skills. Functional skills are great, don’t get me wrong. If you want to grow in a more senior leadership role, there are specific evergreen skills that need to b...
1984 Redux
Jan 10, 2021
One of my favorite books of all time is 1984 by George Orwell. The dystopian novel is a terrifying read because it depicts a possible future where privacy and individualism are things of the past, as is free speech and even free thought. The totalit...
A year of infamy
Jan 03, 2021
This past year was the hardest one of my life. I lost my dear mother-in-law, I had to struggle to keep my small business afloat and was stressed the fuck out from a global pandemic. It was a gut punch in so many ways and I don’t think I’ve fully...
Bullish on Bitcoin
Dec 27, 2020
The first time I heard about Bitcoin was in 2012. I was working at Google and I happened to walk into a conversation with a few engineers. They were talking about mining the cryptocurrency and storing it on an external hard drive. I had no clue what...
Staring into the mirror
Dec 13, 2020
It finally happened this week. Health Canada announced approval of the vaccine. We’re entering the second half of the story, the recovery. Life hopefully will start getting back to normal for most people. While the pandemic caused a lot of human s...
Being in the arena
Dec 06, 2020
Starting a business, no matter the shape or size, is a lonely endeavour. There is no one else to blame when things go wrong. I didn’t know this feeling myself before starting a small consultancy with two friends. The biggest feeling of dread, part...
Breaking through to the other side
Nov 29, 2020
Everyone loves the hero’s journey. It’s one of the quintessential stories in western culture. An underdog that beats impossible odds to make it and achieve what was previously unheard of. These stories permeate popular culture and are imminently...
The three cohorts of the internet
Nov 15, 2020
Growing up in the 90s, I distinctly remember this feeling of awe while discovering the internet for the first time. It was a magical experience with endless possibilities. From discovering new people, to learning new things or simply playing video g...
Strategy vs. Operations
Nov 01, 2020
At my job, we work with management teams and help them sort through tough strategic challenges. We are often confronted with the question of whether something is strategic or if it is operational in nature. It is a very common question and not...
E-bikes suck
Oct 18, 2020
Being on a mountain is my happy place. Particularly when I’m on my mountain bike, sweating, suffering and having fun. There is a certain purity in the experience that is hard to beat. This sentiment is shared in all outdoor sport cultures. Whether...
Don't miss the boat
Oct 11, 2020
Media was arguably the first industry to feel the impact wrought by the internet. The entire business model was disrupted when distribution became free. The cost to distribute & replicate content went down to zero. At the same time, much more ef...
Knowing where the line is
Oct 03, 2020
I love stand-up comedy. It’s amazing to see an artist that masters their art on stage. People laugh because a joke is funny. It’s the purest expression of real time feedback. You’re either funny or you’re not. I can’t imagine the feeling o...
Help Local
Sep 06, 2020
I love that feeling that when you discover a new local product. Be it a restaurant, vineyard, farmer, café or retailer, I really enjoy discovering & shopping local. On top of that, it feels good! You’re supporting a local merchant or producer...
What I learned running a niche podcast
Aug 30, 2020
For the past four years, I’ve been hosting a super niche podcast about business strategy at the intersection of technology. The guests are mostly local CEOs and investors where we talk about their careers, their organizations and their thoug...
The Fountain of Youth
Aug 16, 2020
Is it said that the key to staying young is lifelong learning. If that is the case, then the internet is undeniably the fountain of youth. I distinctly remember the first time I used the internet as a young teenager and feeling this sense of awe. Th...
Start stuff
Jul 19, 2020
The one thing I’ve benefited the most from in my career is to start stuff. It’s easy to say that when you’re in a startup - it’s literally in the name. I believe this is just as important when you’re an employee in a bigger company. By sta...
Think local, act global
Jun 28, 2020
A few weeks ago, I asked a few friends if they were interested in writing an opinion letter together. The idea I had was to combine the ideas different backgrounds and industries on what we can do to improve our society as a result of this crisis (I...
Freedom of thought
Jun 14, 2020
In my early twenties, my friends and I had a weekly ritual. We would get together, smoke some weed, watch the Chappelle Show and laugh our butts off. The show marked me in this moment of time. Not only because it was an amazing sketch comedy but als...
Reasoning from First Principles
Jun 07, 2020
Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle defined a first principle as “the first basis from which a thing is known”. This is not a post about how the Greeks invented everything (although I can make the case for it) but rather a post about learning...
New ways to work
May 24, 2020
In case you haven’t heard, this past week was a seminal moment for the work from home movement. Many of the most important technology companies of our era announced their plans to allow their employees to work from home indefinitely. When th...
Man and Machine
May 10, 2020
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the un...
Learning from hindsight
Apr 26, 2020
Bad experiences make for good stories. I’ve always loved that quote. I like to add that bad mistakes make for good lessons. After five+ years of running a small business, I’ve learned a ton along the way- which is a nicer way of saying that I’...
Shopping carts and business models
Apr 07, 2020
The government of Quebec announced an initiative to help stimulate the local economy. The program seems pretty simple enough. It’s an online marketplace where consumers can find curated local merchants. Consumers benefit from local options, ...
Schism
Mar 29, 2020
What’s happening today is a human tragedy on a scale not seen since the second world war. It is most likely the most important global event in 70 years. It’s difficult to think about anything else than the human costs of this pandemic; death and...
Intellectual Honesty
Mar 14, 2020
I’ve discovered a superpower, admitting that I don’t know what’s going on. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it is actually quite powerful. When confronted with a challenging problem with no obvious solution, I now find it much easier t...
Boards, what are they good for?
Feb 23, 2020
Four times a year, executive teams scramble to prepare themselves for the quarterly board meeting. This simple gathering can take dozens of hours to prepare for leaders of a company. The tradition has become routine and its importance unquesti...
Eating all of advertising
Feb 04, 2020
If you believe that software is eating the world, then you don’t need to look much further than the advertising space for evidence of its existence. The ad industry has transformed from a world of gut feeling and intuition to one of data science a...
The destroyer of worlds
Jan 21, 2020
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Those were the words spoken by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. The world in 1945 was nearing the end of six years of total war. This is when a completely new technology was unl...
