Director-altitude AI strategy,in your inbox every Thursday.

A weekly memo for operators and founders allocating AI budget, hiring AI talent, and shipping AI in production. Framework-anchored. No tool reviews. No prompt tips. No hype.

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Free. One issue per week. Beehiiv embed coming soon, email Edwin directly to be added.

Applied AI Leader's Memo · Weekly, Thursdays

01 · The four shapes

Four shapes.No filler.

Every issue is one of four shapes. Allocation, org design, field debriefs, or frameworks applied. No filler.

Allocation

Allocation memos

How to think about AI spend across the Three-Horizon portfolio. Fund, kill, defend.

Org design

Org design memos

How to structure AI ownership. Leadership-Lab-Crowd patterns. Hiring tradeoffs. When to consolidate, when to decentralize.

Debriefs

Engagement debriefs

Lessons from shipping baxie in public. What worked, what didn't, what I changed my mind about.

Frameworks

Frameworks in practice

Named frameworks applied to real operator decisions, not abstract theory.

What lands in your inboxDirector-altitude thinking on what to actually do with AI at the budget, org design, and portfolio level. Not the prompts. The allocation.

02 · Who it's for

Who it's for.Who it isn't.

Director altitude, not implementer altitude. If you are looking for one-line LinkedIn takes or prompt tips, this isn't it.

Subscribe if →

A CEO, COO, CTO, or VP allocating AI budget
A Head of Product or Head of Engineering deciding what AI ships next
A fractional or full-time AI leader looking for framework anchors
A founder building AI-native products

Skip it if

Looking for prompt tips or tool reviews (plenty of those exist already)
Hoping for hype cycles or model launch coverage
Looking for one-line LinkedIn takes (those are on LinkedIn)

03 · The cadence

One issue per week.Free. One click out.

No drip sequences, no upsells. The memo is how I think out loud, not how I monetize.

Cadence

One issue per week

Lands Thursday morning.

Length

800 to 1,500 words

Enough to be useful, short enough to read with coffee.

Price

Free. No paid tier.

Unsubscribe in one click. No drip sequences, no upsells.

04 · First issue

Issue #1.Coming soon.

Issue #1 is coming soon. Subscribe now to get it in your inbox. After issue #1, this section auto-populates with the most recent 3 to 5 issues.

05 · The market

Loud and shallow.The 2026 market.

The fractional AI consulting market in 2026 is loud and shallow. Most content is implementation tips and tool reviews. No shortage of "10 ChatGPT prompts" content.

The gap I'm writing into: Director-altitude thinking on what to actually do with AI at the budget, org design, and portfolio level. Not the prompts. The allocation.

Every Thursday I write the memo I would have wanted running cross-functional programs at eBay when AI wasn't quite real yet. Now it is. The thinking should catch up.