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Startups & strategy

Founders, funding, open source economics, Wardley maps, Portugal and Europe, legal and go-to-market.

67 articles, newest first. Every article on this site is in exactly one of eight sections.

October 2026 65

• The Web Summit team, part two · Seven people, each with their own agent, a designer with little time, and every voice memo turned into a follow-up within the hour 31 Oct · 7 min
• A brief for the Web Summit team · An event site run by an ephemeral agent team, built from this week's template, with a map of every company we should meet 30 Oct · 8 min
• Selling less code · The economics of customised open source, where the customer pays for the features they use, the maker certifies what it ships, and the pipeline is finally tied to revenue 30 Oct · 8 min
• investor.sgit.ai · A brief for a website where investors and founders use our tools, not read about them, with the news, contracts as graphs, deal rooms as vaults and sgit as the case study 29 Oct · 8 min
• Where to invest in sgit · The tool, a hub for vaults, or open core, with the history of developer platforms, the evidence of use, three business plans, and the investor deck as a vault 28 Oct · 9 min
• The legal AI services map · 44 companies scored on who does the work, who stands behind it, and whether an agent can hire them, with the evidence in a public vault 28 Oct · 7 min
• Legal on demand for startups · Agent teams that do the reading, lawyers who sign, and a meter instead of a retainer, with three vaults that show the founder's desk, the investor's desk and the deal room 27 Oct · 12 min
• Websites you own · A reply to an infographic that sells AI-built websites by the month, section by section, why rent is the wrong model, and the one-off model I propose, where the client owns Claude, GitHub and the… 26 Oct · 9 min
• Inside Kitewing Websites · A made-up studio that sells websites you own, and three made-up client sites built as vault apps, a potter's catalogue, a community garden and a local plumber's guides library, each one file, each… 26 Oct · 5 min
• Web Summit 2026, the plan · A briefing for the team on usage first and the sale after, intelligence from public material, an asset, a page and a link for every person we want to reach, a newsroom of our own for the summit, and… 26 Oct · 9 min
• Translate the assumption, not the vocabulary · Adelina Chalmers' five stages of a CTO's mindset, what they mean for how we brief boards on php2shell, and why a deck for every reader is communication with empathy 25 Oct · 5 min
• Simplified, or outsourced? · A reply to Nadzeya Stalbouskaya on removing servers and databases: the risk is real, so map it, move only to real commodities, and ask who would certify what you now depend on 25 Oct · 6 min
• The maintenance deficit, with evidence · A follow-up to Dion Wiggins on why open source's business model fails the people who maintain it, checked against the PHP story's own data 23 Oct · 9 min
• How to help · Six steps for anyone who wants to be involved with sgit, Risk Mandate or this newsroom, and what they get back 21 Oct · 6 min
• The Open Security Summit and its debt · How a summit that treated every participant as a presenter stalled on its own website, what the code shows, and why agents make it worth restarting 21 Oct · 7 min
• Connect your dots backwards · A look-back interview with your LLM, for founders, to find the non-linear path, the doors that were not what they seemed, and where a startup may be hiding 21 Oct · 7 min
• Programming, taught upside down · What Lockhart said about maths applies to code, the tools that got the loop right, and why explorer coding finally starts at the right end 21 Oct · 7 min
• The jobs that never scaled · On-demand expertise, the work before and after the meeting, and why a historian, a librarian or a consultant can now work for every project that needs one 21 Oct · 12 min
• Free to copy, paid at the source · Why an official website can charge per use for open policies and hooks, and why we will have them reviewed, audited and signed 20 Oct · 6 min
• The exit is when you sell control · Why a founder should leave the day someone else is calling the shots, and why to negotiate that day at the start, the Mourinho clause 20 Oct · 8 min
• A small slice sets the price · What the 2026 mega-listings actually sold, how much of each company changed hands, and what founders should take from it 20 Oct · 9 min
• Inside the no-server studio · An infographic studio built to the no-server blueprint, what is real, what is simulated, and the business plan in its vault 20 Oct · 6 min
• The no-server startup · A blueprint for products that run entirely in the browser, with no server and no database of yours, the user's own AI key, and a team of agents to build them 20 Oct · 13 min
• When the customer becomes the commodity · Where your customer sits on your Wardley map, why Google and Amazon lost my trust, and why local delivery should be infrastructure 19 Oct · 7 min
• Open source what you build, even while you are employed · Nobody copies it, and it is the only way you get to keep using it 19 Oct · 6 min
• Fund it with time · What a startup needs most is time, the best place to find it is the job you have, and money is only ever a way to buy more of it 19 Oct · 5 min
• You are a developer, you just do not call it that · What every GenAI founder I know does all day, the sausage factory they never saw, and why the book may be called Generation ZX Founders 19 Oct · 9 min
• Start a company · The UK, where it takes an afternoon, Portugal, where I learned the hard way, and Lithuania, where I would like to go next 19 Oct · 10 min
• Can you sell it? · Start selling what you have, however rough it is, because the point is not to sell, it is to learn 19 Oct · 5 min
• Short, punchy, and co-written with Claude · What Generation Z Developers (AI edition) has to be, and how we show it is not AI slop 18 Oct · 4 min
• Generation Z Developers (AI edition) · The 2018 book that said act like you are part of the company, what it got right, and a new edition for the people I want to help 18 Oct · 9 min
• Act as the job you want · If you are looking for a job, you have time, so do the work in public, make it linkable, and let the people who want to help you help you 18 Oct · 6 min
• Ephemeral town planner services · A better name than serverless, now that serverless includes things that bill you by the hour 18 Oct · 9 min
• Three companies, three LinkedIn pages · The brief, the drafts and the first posts, in the open 18 Oct · 12 min
• Who will fix your mess? · An answer to HBR's "deployment gap" from what this site has already published: explorers, villagers and town planners, a record of what the agents built, and open source so the answer never depends… 17 Oct · 9 min
• The fork next door · Why open source protects founders, customers and investors from each other, why forks only take hold when someone stops executing, and why a maturing company should give its explorers a way out 16 Oct · 15 min
• The controllable founder · Why investors pick one founder over another who looks just as good, and what record labels taught us about who the commodity is 16 Oct · 13 min
• Sell, don't issue · A funding model for founders who have already won, where the investor buys the founder's shares, the founder lends the company what it needs, and open source keeps everyone honest 16 Oct · 15 min
• Portugal and Europe, 2025 · Five essays on Portuguese as a programming language, an open-source sovereign cloud, regulation as graphs and Europe's chance in GenAI, and how they read a year and a half later 16 Oct · 5 min
• GenAI in Portuguese, 2024 · My OWASP Global AppSec talk in Lisbon, the first public demo of The Cyber Boardroom, slide by slide, with what two years of agents have confirmed and changed 16 Oct · 5 min
• Hacking Portugal, 2016 · My BSidesLisbon keynote and the book that stopped at 95%, slide by slide, with what holds ten years later and what a new edition needs 16 Oct · 6 min
• A web application security challenge to Portugal, 2010 · My IBWAS keynote in Lisbon, slide by slide, with what came true, what I got wrong and what still stands 16 Oct · 5 min
• Software vendors should become villagers and town planners · Let users explore on top of the product, sell them the maintenance of what they build, and use Firefox as the example of what happens if you don't 16 Oct · 8 min
• Explorer coding · A better name for what people call vibe coding, what it is good for, and the handover to villagers and town planners before anyone depends on it 16 Oct · 6 min
• Agentics, ready to sell · What we showed at Agentic Engineering Live, who else is selling agentic services and at what price, the engagement path, and a marketplace for the consultants who deliver it 16 Oct · 9 min
• The expert founders · Why the next startups will be built by the people who know the problem, and why Europe's slower, sceptical money suits them 15 Oct · 12 min
• The citizen developer is good news · The spreadsheet grown up, the best briefs ever written, and the handover from explorers to villagers and town planners that makes them last 14 Oct · 6 min
• Paying after the value · Why a balance that can go negative feels different from a subscription, the psychology behind it, and the experiment this newsroom is running 14 Oct · 8 min
• The eyeballs get cheap · Why open source is about to become the most secure software we have, and why secure, sovereign and paid-for meet at the least code in production 14 Oct · 9 min
• Chainguard, mapped · What it builds, what it publishes, how far up the stack its context goes, and where an open behaviour policy and an encrypted vault could plug in 14 Oct · 9 min
• Stop the bleeding, then ask for it back · A helper, an agent and a friendly letter for the subscriptions you keep and do not use 13 Oct · 18 min
• What open source is, and what it is not · Six misconceptions, a little history, and why the point is that nobody can lock you in 12 Oct · 10 min
• Not a straight line · Working for RiskMandate by working on the newsroom, and why the thinking is never wasted 12 Oct · 11 min
• Sovereignty is the ability to move · Play where the ball is going, take away the dot, and keep a twin that works 12 Oct · 12 min
• Move the cloud, not the code · Twins, sovereignty that works in practice, and the migration that pays for itself on the day you switch 12 Oct · 13 min
• Judo for small countries · Where Portugal, Romania and Estonia can add the most value in AI, and why the race for GPUs is not it 12 Oct · 18 min
• Why I love Wardley maps · The best of ours, how I read one, and a map inside a map inside a map 12 Oct · 19 min
• Places of highest leverage · Where to focus when the agents can go in every direction, told with three days of real steps 12 Oct · 11 min
• Agentic cost is an engineering problem · A business plan for a service that reads the logs a company already has and finds the money, then the engineering 12 Oct · 10 min
• The key is the billing system · VoiceDebrief, a product with no server, the one thing it cannot sell, and who could let it 12 Oct · 17 min
• I miss it, so it is working · The people who decide the roadmap have to use the product, and the vault the newsroom now needs 11 Oct · 10 min
• Open source is not free · Who pays to keep the long tail working? 10 Oct · 18 min
• A Mac of the agent's own · A business plan for agent desktops, what Apple's licence allows, and three behaviour policies 9 Oct · 13 min
• The deck I could not download · An author-first home for presentations, as a business plan somebody else can build 6 Oct · 17 min
• Price it, then give it away · The early access programme as the next step after "do they miss it" 2 Oct · 11 min

September 2026 2

• For a startup, the most important question is whether they miss it · Ship something usable, give it away briefly, take it away and see whether anybody misses it; charge at a profit before you talk to investors. 21 Sep · 7 min
• The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI · Incumbents and newcomers have the same AI; what separates them is how much past success each has to protect, so inertia decides which SaaS companies survive. 21 Sep · 14 min