New essays from live work.
From an operator shipping agentic AI into mid-market companies this week. Essays, field notes, and the occasional long-form teardown. No listicles.
What an AAIF award says about building in the open
On October 23, 2026, the Agentic AI Foundation gave Vstorm its Open Agentic AI Innovation Award. Why this recognition matters to me as a founder.
The Ostrich Problem: industry problems no one talks about in AI transformation.
Nine structural problems across consulting, outsourcing and agentic AI transformation, drawn from hundreds of meetings with mid-market and enterprise companies.
The $500K deck trap: why most mid-market AI projects die before shipping.
Why mid-market AI transformations stall at the deck, and the four decisions that separate teams who ship production agents from teams still circulating a PDF.
Shipping agents in 6 weeks: the boutique cadence and where the time actually goes.
The exact four-phase cadence we use for mid-market agentic AI transformations — and an honest breakdown of where the time goes.
Build vs. buy: a decision tree for the 200–5,000 person company sitting on the agentic AI fence.
Build vs. buy for agentic AI looks different in the mid-market than in enterprise. Here is the framework I use with every new client.