Insights
Essays on the agentic payments stack
B2B finance is moving from manual back-office operations to autonomous, agent-driven settlement. Long-form, published when there's something new to say.
Start here
New to the subject
The thesis
The whole argument on one page. One human and one agent, five steps, and what would prove it wrong.
The flagship essay
Canonicalization Beats Workflow
The structural insight underneath everything else here. The schema is the product.
Something for a Sunday
Come Sit Near Me
A lake boat should not exist. Which is the first clue it was never a vehicle.
The argument so far
The spine of it →The professional lane, numbered the way the argument runs.
Canonicalization Beats Workflow
The structural insight that explains adjudication, EDI, and remittance reconciliation in one move. The schema is the product. Workflow is the consequence of not having one.
Authorization Without Identity
Why AI agents can initiate payments while the settlement layer still expects a human authorizer.
Field notes
Bill.com just cut 30% of its workforce and lost its CCO and CTO in the same week.
Short-form on LinkedIn ↗
The $30 trillion B2B payments market has a 100 percent incentive problem.
Short-form on LinkedIn ↗
New edition of The Long Game is up. The Next Internet Monopoly Will Start at the Payment Layer.
Short-form on LinkedIn ↗
Off the clock
Occasional essays from outside the day job.
Come Sit Near Me6 min
A lake boat should not exist. It costs as much as a car and works twenty days a year. Which is the first clue it was never a vehicle. It was a room, and the room was the point.
No One Is Coming6 min
The fear that keeps you awake has a direction, and the direction is toward. But the things worth fearing do not travel. They already wrote themselves into you and left.
The Dog Lottery5 min
On luck, low expectations, and the growing suspicion that we backed the wrong species. A short essay on the draw every dog is handed, and what being the house it lands in says about us.
Soft Bristles7 min
A hygienist's scolding about brushing too hard becomes a theory of effort. Some things are surfaces that yield to force. The good things are crevices that only open to precision, and telling the two apart is the whole game.
You Are Not the User4 min
When you use AI you are not the one being helped. You are the one aiming it. A short essay on the gap between everything a model knows and the one thing it cannot, what you actually want.
Our Show7 min
A short personal essay on the cheapest word in the language, and the size of the life it quietly carries.
The Resonance Hypothesis22 min
A philosophical essay on what artificial intelligence reveals about consciousness. The receiver hypothesis, the strongest objection against it, and the asymmetric-error ethics that hold regardless of how the metaphysics resolves.
The Long Game
Follow the payments thesis
New essays on autonomous settlement, the orchestration layer, and the calls I am making in public are published through LinkedIn.
Opens in a new tab on LinkedIn.