I work with software company CEOs whose product-market fit isn’t coming together - whether they built something that worked and the ground shifted, or they’re trying to get to fit for the first time. I’ve navigated five technology shifts across 30 years. GenAI is the sixth, not the first.
Engineering, product, executive - three genuinely different disciplines, each in its full depth. Chief architect. VP Product. CPO. CPTO: both at once. CEO. Four exits. Multiple turnarounds. Across companies from scrappy early-stage to acquisition-ready.
Most advisors see one slice - technical, product, or business. Three disciplines in full depth makes it possible to hold all of them simultaneously, without losing resolution when the conversation moves between them.
Sometimes that’s as a thinking partner - privately, on your side of the table, no stake in the answer. Sometimes the situation calls for stepping inside and leading product or engineering directly. The common thread is product-market fit: finding it, losing it, re-finding it.
What if the disadvantages of being an incumbent have quietly inverted into an unfair advantage - and the questions are whether the company you scaled can recognize it and can hold a problem that doesn't fit any seat at the table?
For the first time, the disadvantages of being an incumbent appear to be inverting into an unfair advantage. GenAI is collapsing the cost to test new directions and to adapt existing systems, while the durable asset has shifted to what an established company has been quietly accumulating across its lifetime: customer knowledge that GenAI-native startups don’t have. The advantage is yours. The harder question is whether the company you built can create the conditions to solve a problem that doesn’t fit any seat at the table you already have.
What if the discipline of deleting code is the easy half - and letting go of the company you built around defending it is the work?
Code used to be the moat - slow to build, hard to copy. Now it regenerates in a weekend, while customer and domain knowledge still takes years. The durable asset has flipped, but most companies still guard the code and neglect the knowledge underneath it. Goecke argues the same inside the stack: the spec is the real artifact, and the discipline is comfort with deletion. At the company level, that means being willing to let go of the identity built around what you sell - long enough to discover what your market needs now.
The Problem You're About to Solve for Agents Is the One You've Been Working Around With People
The decision you’re making about agent infrastructure is more loaded than it looks. It’s not an AI investment. It’s the move the regime change has made non-optional and the companies that build this for agents will solve the same context-sharing problem your company has been working around for years.