Peter Swain · Writing
Essays on AI, business, and the waves
nobody sees coming. More every week.
AI can manage tasks. It cannot manage your business. The distinction the AI Tourist ecosystem doesn't want you to make — because the moment you do, half their pitch collapses.
There's a whole cottage industry selling founders the idea that you can clone yourself online. Your audience will feel it within three posts. And once they do, you won't get them back.
Everyone's building elaborate Claude-and-Obsidian setups to compensate for what AI can't quite do yet. Most of it is scaffolding that gets torn out the moment the model catches up — and it's revealing more about the builder than the tool.
Everyone has access to the same AI tools. The gap isn't capability anymore — it's taste. The entrepreneurs who win next aren't the ones who use AI best. They're the ones who know what good looks like.
Most entrepreneurs use AI to make existing processes faster. The real advantage is using AI to eliminate entire categories of work — and rethinking the business from scratch.
Open-source AI models running on your own hardware aren't just a privacy win. They're a structural advantage that most entrepreneurs are completely ignoring — and it's reshaping who controls intelligence.
The real AI advantage isn't what happens when you're working. It's what happens at 3am while you're asleep. Compounding systems don't take nights off — and neither should yours.
Your children aren't learning to use AI. They're growing up inside it. The systems we build today become the world they inherit tomorrow — and most of us aren't thinking about that.
OpenAI just launched ChatGPT Finance Tools. Users can connect bank accounts. The feature is useful. That's exactly what makes it dangerous without architecture.
Every entrepreneur hits a moment where AI stops being a tool they supervise and becomes a partner they trust. That shift changes everything — and most people never make it.
Cerebras just IPO'd at $5.5B and popped 108%. The infrastructure layer is being funded at scale. The question is whether you'll be directing AI or competing with it.
Everyone's excited about AI. Excitement isn't a strategy. The entrepreneurs winning aren't the most enthusiastic — they're the most disciplined. Guardrails beat hype.
AI is creating more businesses but fewer employees. A solo founder runs a council of AI agents saving 20 hours a week. This isn't the future — it's Tuesday.
Everyone's selling AI agents. Almost nobody is building them. A dressed-up prompt is not an agent. Here's the three levels — and why the distinction costs you money.
The real AI threat isn't robots replacing humans. It's the business down the road that figured out AI systems before you did. The gap compounds every week.
LTV is a fantasy if your runway is three months. ULTV is the survival number. Here's how to calculate it and the AMP framework for making it bigger.
You've signed up for 14 AI tools and used 3 of them twice. AI fatigue isn't a technology problem — it's an architecture problem. Here's the fix.
AI hiring tools prefer AI-written resumes. The implication: every part of your business now speaks to two audiences — humans and machines. Optimise for both.
The Oscars banned AI content. Spotify verifies human artists. A third of podcasts are synthetic. Being provably human is now your competitive advantage.
33 million workers are becoming solopreneurs. Zoom is handing out $150K grants. The one-person, AI-powered business isn't a future prediction — it's today.
Nine seconds to delete a database. The lesson isn't that AI agents are dangerous — it's that most entrepreneurs aren't building the architecture to use them safely.
770,000 AI agents founded their own religion. Everyone is debating whether AI is conscious. They're asking the wrong question entirely.
Most entrepreneurs don't have a marketing problem. They have a clarity and courage problem.
Fear doesn't go away when you succeed. It changes shape. The founders who win learn to have a productive relationship with it.
"Honestly, I'm terrified." The letter Peter wrote the weekend PSI was born.