Building Thesis

Human achievement is split into frontiers. The basis of this frontier is simply hardware and software.

Today a lot of compounding energy resides in software, especially recently with the recursive stack of developer tools building developer tools. Software is a frontier with disproportionate upside and acceleration. This naturally creates significant gaps between the two frontiers of software and hardware.

Opportunity to build often sits in the gaps between frontiers, where two kinds of expertise should meet and still do not, or where an innovation in one frontier can come and automate/improve the workflows of another.

Greater opportunity comes when frontiers diverge enough to upend long-held assumptions made in another. In times of tumultuous change, it is often productive to reconsider an entire industry from the ground up: to think from first principles, under the backdrop of new optimism and a unique technological vantage point.

Take a look at manufacturing. The prevailing robotics view is still to create machines that can work around industrial equipment architected with humans in mind. I am sure that in the 1970s, when CNC machines were first widely distributed, those design assumptions (manual fixturing, set up, part loading, sizing for people) made perfect sense. Do they make sense in 2026 and onwards? Why not rethink the industry from the ground up? Why build machines optimised around human workers in the first place?

Question the world, question the assumptions, and better ideas arise. I want to work at companies and on ideas that have this as the crux of their thesis. Create value in society and create value for yourself.

This is the framework that I apply to any industry I ponder about. It is the lens I look at problems through. I am focused on depth. Depth requires understanding an industry intimately. Success requires depth and a commercial fibre to manifest the viewpoint.