Essays
The operator blog.
Methodology notes, build updates, and the unsexy decisions behind the portfolio. Closer to a public record than a marketing channel. Roughly one or two pieces a month — when one has earned its place, not before.
These essays are also the manuscript-in-progress for a methodology book on building one vertical-AEO brand at a time.
Essay · 05
Your CDN might be hiding you from AI search — and you'd never know
Since July 2025, Cloudflare blocks the AI crawlers by default on new sites. Most owners have no idea, because the only place it shows is a file they never read. I found it on my own site. Here's the receipt, the honest nuance, and a thirty-second check.
· 5 min read
Essay · 04
Google's new knowledge format is real. Three of the loudest claims about it aren't.
Google Cloud published the Open Knowledge Format (OKF) — a spec for filing business knowledge as markdown for AI agents. I read the spec instead of the hot takes. It tells an AI how to read your business, not how to find you — and the three loudest claims about it (llms.txt discovery, a buy/sell marketplace, "the new schema") aren't in the document.
· 6 min read
Essay · 03
The week AI search became a property market
Seven separate AI-search headlines in one week were really one story: the answer surface grew the institutions of a property market — a land registry, a zoning board, tolls, the first sale of the land. Why that makes "how do I get traffic from AI search" the wrong question.
· 7 min read
Essay · 02
Which AI SDR tools do the answer engines actually recommend? I measured it
I ran the buyer queries a VP of Sales actually types into AI search and tallied which AI SDR tools get cited. One company shows up in every answer; a cluster of well-funded names shares the next tier; and almost all of them have the same blind spot.
· 7 min read
Essay · 01
Why I'm building one vertical-AEO brand before a horizontal SaaS
A horizontal AI-visibility prototype that worked on every category was unsellable in all of them. The case for picking one boring vertical first — and what I got wrong about this question in 2017 and again in 2023.
· 9 min read
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