Intellectual Frontiers Portfolio

42 of 113 works · Press.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2026

Why Doesn’t Engineering Already Know This?

A guide for executives who think every technical problem should already be obvious to the engineering team. Simple after discovery is not the same thing as obvious before discovery, and confusing the two produces terrible management decisions.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2026

Alpha, Benchmarks, and Why I Borrowed the Word From Investors

Alpha in finance is the return you cannot explain by the market. Here is what that actually means, why investors bother separating skill from luck, and which parts of the idea carry over to running a company and which do not.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2026

Capability Is Cheap Now. Advantage Is Not.

AI made building things dramatically cheaper, which quietly destroyed a lot of differentiation that was never real. How to tell commodity execution from differentiated execution, and where to spend the judgment you have left.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2026

Someone Outside the Room Has to Care

Enthusiasm inside a company proves nothing. The strength of evidence for an advantage is measured by what somebody outside gave up to act on it, from a compliment at the bottom to a renewal at the top.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2026

Product-Market Fit Does Not Tell You Who to Sell To

The same product can be ordinary for one buyer and transformative for another. Product-asymmetry fit and the Ideal Alpha Profile explain why the customer with the biggest problem is often the wrong customer.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2026

Where Native Alpha Actually Lives, and How It Decays

Advantage is contextual, it hides at surprisingly small scales, it needs protection in the place it actually lives, and it expires. How to find it, where to put the fence, and when to admit it is gone.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2026

First Principles Got Turned Into a Slogan

Reasoning from first principles means stripping a problem down to what you can verify and rebuilding from there. In executive hands it usually means ignoring people with experience. This is the real version, and how it fits with Native Alpha.

BookPressIn progress2026

Bare Metal Software

Software stacks grew taller because human developers needed abstractions, frameworks, libraries, SDKs, and managed services to make difficult work practical. Native AI changes that tradeoff.

BookPressIn progress2026

Chasing Native Alpha

When every competitor can reach for capable models, coding agents, cloud infrastructure, and increasingly similar technology, producing more software is no longer a sufficient strategy.

BookPressIn progress2026

The Code Takes Care of Itself

A contrarian, practical leadership book for the technologist who was promoted because they were the best engineer in the room, and is now discovering that the same instinct can make them the organization's most expensive bottleneck.

BookPressIn progress2026

The CTO You Actually Need

The CTO title hides radically different jobs. A startup builder, SME technology leader, business-unit CTO, enterprise strategist, and fractional adviser can all be excellent, but not for the same company or moment.

Founder writingPressDesign Pattern2025

How Senior Officials Should Think About AI Roadmaps

AI roadmaps are not just technical plans; they are trust strategies, implementation guides, and accountability tools. In this post, Shahid Shah outlines the essential components of AI roadmaps for governments and mission-driven organizations, and how to evaluate if your roadmap is truly ready for execution.

ResearchPressOngoing2025

Which new forms of work become possible

Our standing argument that the interesting question about AI is not which jobs get faster, but which jobs become possible that nobody was ever staffed to do. It underwrites how all four units pick their work.

Founder writingPressWorking Theory2024

Why Machine Attestation is Key in the Age of CMMC

Under the DoD’s CMMC Program, maintaining continuous compliance is crucial, and machine attestation provides the consistency and accuracy human checks can’t match. By automating compliance tracking, contractors can ensure real-time verification, creating a robust audit trail and reducing compliance risks across contract lifecycles.

Founder writingPressPractitioner Journalist2024

Healthcare’s Cybersecurity Crisis: Leadership Challenges and Strategic Solutions

Healthcare's cybersecurity crisis is critical, with outdated defenses exposing patient data and trust. Zero Trust is now mandatory, and delays in breach detection can cause immense damage. Effective leadership, including fractional CISOs, is essential for modern defense. Inaction isn't an option, proactive steps are necessary to safeguard against sophisticated threats.

Founder writingPressPractitioner Journalist2024

CTOs: The Overlooked Asset in a VC's Portfolio

Venture capitalists often overlook the strategic importance of a Chief Technology Officer (CTO), mistaking technical co-founders as a simple checkbox. A seasoned CTO bridges vision and execution, aligning tech strategy with business goals, mitigating risks, and driving innovation, key factors that can make or break a startup's success.

Founder writingPressPractitioner Journalist2024

Transforming Healthcare with Advanced Applications of High-Performance Computing

High-performance computing (HPC) has revolutionized healthcare, particularly in fields like oncology and biomedical engineering, where it enables researchers to perform complex simulations and genetic analyses far quicker than traditional methods. The transition from conventional numerical analysis to dynamic generative AI has further expanded the capabilities of this powerful technology, not only enhancing patient care but also reshaping expectations for rapid medical innovation.

Founder writingPressDesign Pattern2024

From Vulnerability to Strength: The Role of CISO Services in Cyber Resilience

There was a time when no one really needed a CISO. Today, an organization would be dangerously insane not to have one. And that CISO had better be top-notch. The role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) has evolved significantly from being solely a technology-focused professional to becoming a strategic business leader

Founder writingPressWorking Theory2023

Embrace Compliance as Code

Exploring the benefits of transitioning to a 'compliance as code' model by reflecting on successful implementations of other 'as code' models.

Founder writingPressContrarian Brief2023

Staff Retention Might Be More Important Than Recruiting

Staff retention refers to the ability of a company to retain its employees over a period of time. It is a crucial aspect of any organization, especially in the technology sector where skilled professionals are in high demand.…

Founder writingPressDesign Pattern2023

Enterprise Architecture: A Guide for Tech Leaders

Enterprise architecture is a strategic framework that helps organizations align their business and technology strategies. It provides a holistic view of the organization’s structure, processes, and systems, enabling effective…

Founder writingPressDesign Pattern2023

The Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Chief Technology Officer

A Fractional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is a senior-level executive who provides part-time, strategic guidance and leadership in the technology domain. Unlike a full-time CTO, a fractional CTO works on a contract basis,…

Founder writingPressWorking Theory2023

How a Fractional Chief Technology Officer Can Drive Innovation

A Fractional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is a highly skilled and experienced technology executive who works with companies on a part-time or project basis. They provide strategic guidance and leadership in the development…

ResearchPressOngoing2023

The plain-English patent summary series

Every family in the register, rewritten so an operator can tell in two minutes whether it applies to their problem. A standing publication program, not a marketing page.

Online publicationPressOperating2018

OperationalTruth.org

The record of what systems actually do in the field versus what they are documented to do, which is where our findings start.

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Online publicationPressOperating2017

Medigy.com

A health innovation discovery platform: crowd-curated technology, use cases, and market signal used as an intelligence surface, not a blog.

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Online publicationPressOperating2016

CompliantInSecurity.com

The standing argument that passing an audit is not the same as being secure, written for the people who own both obligations.

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MethodPressIn use2016

Native Alpha

Our method for turning a finding into an owned position: find, prove, decide, compound. It is a work in its own right, because everything else in this register was produced by running it.

Online publicationPressOperating2015

GovConIC.com

GovCon Intelligence Center (GovCon IC): the publication for how public agencies buy, modernize, and evaluate technology.

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Online publicationPressOperating2008

HealthcareGuys.com

A healthcare media network of news, interviews, and vendor coverage written for the people who buy and run health technology, not the people who sell it.

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Online publicationPressOperating2005

HealthcareGuy.com

The longest continuous record in the publishing program: a personal site where health IT arguments, field observations, and invention sketches have been published in public for two decades.

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What counts as a work

Patent family

A family of USPTO filings around one invention, granted or pending, with its real status.

Venture

An operating company chartered by Studios, with an entity, an operator, and a closure path.

Shared service

A capability built for the whole portfolio and designed to be spun out on its own.

Company

A company funded, built, or spun out. (Lapsed filings remain in the patent register.)

Fund

A pool of capital with a written thesis and a stated deployment model.

Book

Long-form publishing that makes the case for an invention or an operating model.

Research

Standing research programs and publication series, including peer-reviewed work.

Research paper

Trademark

Landscape study

A landscape read that changed a filing or funding decision.

Defensive disclosure

A defensive publication that puts prior art in the open so a bad patent cannot be filed later.

Dataset

A structured intelligence asset that decides where capital, filings, or ventures go next.

Method

A reusable operating method that the rest of the portfolio is built on.

Founder writing

A piece the founder published on his own site, tagged by type, that argues a finding in the open before it becomes a filing or a fund.

Online publication

An owned online publication that makes the case for our work to a standing audience.