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Frontier models are expensive prototypes that reveal what AI can do. Vertical SaaS companies can build durable advantage by converting those capabilities into domain-specific, economically sustainable workflows, even when any particular model has a short shelf life.

The true cost of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence is becoming apparent. Frontier model token costs and the products built on top of them have been heavily subsidized by venture investment. This is the typical strategy to drive early adoption of new technology and for competitors to execute land grabs. We remember when rideshares were awkwardly cheap and Uber and Lyft used unprofitable incentives to keep drivers on the road. An AI price reckoning is unfolding, and I’m certainly not the only one talking about it .

For the last ten years, when someone asked me if I eat healthy, work out, sleep enough, or read, I’d say, “Not as much as I want to.” Now that my kids and company are out of their toddler years, the hard truth is that I do all of those things exactly as much as I want to. In January, I realized I was chronically staring at my phone in the dead zone between my kids’ bedtimes and my own. So I swapped scrolling (or some of it, at least) for reading. No big plan or personal challenge, just an experiment. The habit stuck, and I haven’t read this much since college. I’ll spare you book reports and unsolicited advice on why you should read more. What I do want to share is my journey through an eclectic pile of books and the themes that emerged, from the perspective of a tech co-founder and father trying to re-build a reading habit.

I moved to the Boston area thirteen years ago, and it didn’t take long for me to find You-do-it Electronics, with its anachronistic neon sign shining like a beacon to electronics nerds driving up I-95. This summer, it shut its doors for good, which leaves me sad, even though I knew its closing was inevitable from the first moment I walked in there.

I loved You-do-it for its narrow aisles filled with connectors, cables, wire, multimeters, soldering irons, rack hardware, and countless other components for any electronics project. When I built out an A/V and networking rack for my house, at least part of my motivation for the project was an excuse to shop at You-do-it. When Paperless Parts moved into its first office, that’s where I bought our networking equipment.

What I learned taking one of MIT’s hardest graduate computer science classes (besides lots of math)

This past fall, I had the rare opportunity to take a graduate engineering course at MIT without being enrolled in a degree program. I knew a class would be hard, but being a student at the best technical school in the world, if only for a couple months, was something I had to experience. I talked to some students and recent grads, picked a class, and registered.