Thinking out loud

Satya Nadella called SaaS dead in December 2024. Most people heard a technology claim. It was a commercial one, and once you see it that way, the implication for every B2B FinTech business is immediate.

93% of developers use AI coding tools. Team productivity has improved 10%. The bottleneck was never the build — and the operating model still hasn't caught up.

AI removed the old forcing function for saying no. Here's what accumulates in the gap — and what it looks like when a sophisticated buyer finds it.

The scaling crack that almost nobody names before it breaks — and the five transitions that separate Series A operating habits from Series C expectations.

Andrew Ng's teams are now proposing one PM to 0.5 engineers. The new constraint isn't building — it's deciding what to build.

The model and the failure modes are both about the product team and what surrounds it. This part is about the layer above — the CEO sponsorship and C-suite alignment that determines whether any of it holds.

The model is only as good as your ability to navigate what gets in the way. Nine failure modes that appear in almost every product transformation, in variations of the same pattern.

Most organisations that say they want to be product-led have renamed their teams but not changed their thinking. Part one: the framework for the operating model that actually works — squad design, roles, and the engineering foundation.