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If you’re here for the first time, welcome. I’m Duncan Grazier — I build.
Right now I’m building Aqen.ai: you bring the idea, Aqen brings everything else. Grazier Ventures is the holding company for the portfolio of companies I’ll build using Aqen — Aqen is the first. I also run TideHelm, the advisory practice founders, investors, and CTOs call before the hardest decisions. Previously Chief AI Officer at BuildOps (unicorn), scaled Weedmaps engineering through IPO, led ShopKeep through a $550M acquisition.
I write here every Tuesday about AI implementation, engineering leadership, and what it actually takes to build in the AI era. Here’s where to start based on what you’re interested in:
AI Implementation & Strategy
- “Tokenmaxxing” Is Lines-of-Code Thinking for the Agentic Era — Why measuring AI by token consumption repeats every engineering metrics mistake
- Minutes Added To Workforce — A better framework for measuring AI’s real value
- Your AI Notetaker Is the Biggest Security Decision You’re Not Making — The shadow IT problem nobody’s talking about
- The Pre-AI to Post-AI Company Transition — What changes when you go AI-native
Engineering Leadership
- Are You Managing Your Manager? (The Agentic Update) — The 2015 talk that started it all, updated for the agentic era
- Can AI Solve the Four Burner Problem? — What AI capacity expansion means for work-life balance
- Block Just Cut 3,500 Jobs. You’re Reading It Wrong. — Why the layoffs narrative misses the real story
The Deeper Stuff
- Awe in an AI World — What it feels like to live through this moment
- The Next Platform Giant Is Hiding in Plain Sight — Where the next GitHub-scale company will come from
Subscribe to get new posts every Tuesday — or connect with me on LinkedIn.