But does it scale? A few years back, I managed a leader who was an excellent student. She read the management books and attended the development conferences. If there was a process, she followed it. If you asked AI to generate a "diligent executive" persona, it would look like her. Like a lot of leaders who are good students, she enjoyed applying her knowledge. She used standard rubrics to measure performance. Her team meetings had structured agendas. And by far, her favorite question to ask...
7 days ago • 3 min read
You are probably a weird special case too Last year, I published a lot of data about the job market and the experience candidates were having (getting ghosted a lot). But I didn't share much about my own recruiting experience. I started a new job just before Thanksgiving. I wrote about my role, as well as some others I'd considered, when I first announced it. This week, I wanted to share some data from my job search. I was a long-time founder and startup person who was interested in seeing an...
14 days ago • 3 min read
You can't outsource having a point Every once in a while, I hear someone announce that they have a goal of doing more thought leadership. For a long time, I didn't understand what this meant. Magic decoder ring to the rescue: "I want to do more thought leadership" often means the person wants to write articles, often on LinkedIn but sometimes elsewhere, that make people believe the author is smart, forward-leaning, and inspiring. More often than not, it actually means they want someone else...
21 days ago • 3 min read
You say spam, I say data set Across all four professional email addresses I used in 2025, I got a lot of random cold email: 5,122 messages in all from 229 distinct vendors trying to sell me stuff. In fact, I get so much cold email that I wrote about it: they're not all about AI, but after ChatGPT launched, the percentage of total pitches trying to sell me AI went through the roof. You probably get these messages too. If you're like most people, you hit the unsubscribe button, block the...
28 days ago • 3 min read
Starting 2026 nerd processor with a bang next week: brand-new original data about the AI promises people doubled-down on and backed away from in 2025. Why not subscribe? My latest data stories | Build like a founder | nerdprocessor.com kieran@nerdprocessor.comUnsubscribe · Preferences
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Etch-a-sketch brain Even though I've spent the last 11 years making software for enterprise, I myself worked exclusively in startup environments. I've just wrapped up my first month back as an employee in a big company. It's been a long time since I've been the new kid, and wow, I had not realized the extent of my etch-a-sketch brain: Much of my knowledge of BigCo got erased after I founded a startup. Here are four things I forgot, big and small. #1: Elephants have long memories In my second...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
I love it when a plan comes together I'm a big team person. I have played and coached sports all my life. I have built teams both small and large in multiple settings. I regularly sign up to be the team parent for my daughter's sports (much to her chagrin, sorry not sorry). Maybe this is why I have long been fascinated by team dynamics at work. Last year, I looked at startup performance data and concluded that team size matters. In particular, startups with teams of about 5 people per manager...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Gigantic, a big big love I've spent the last decade building and advising AI startups (tiny companies) that make software for enterprises (ginormous companies). In other words, while I've built products for big companies, my own personal AI adoption has happened mostly at small ones. Now that I'm working in a big place again, I am thinking a lot about big AI and small AI. Think big, act small As a product leader, I understood that enterprises were different from startups, but I mostly...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
This year in AI If you've been reading nerd processor over the last year, you know I've spent a lot of time thinking about the AI transformation of work. For instance, we've talked about why most AI projects fail before they start. I explained why, in an AI world, people mistakes are costlier than ever. And we've talked about the economics of AI companies and whether things are sustainable. I am a builder at heart, so I've also written about my own use of AI. In reviewing my public speaking,...
2 months ago • 3 min read