So great to finally sit down in London with @HarryStebbings - we covered a lot of ground!

I asked my Amazon ex-boss what it really cost him to make VP. Andrew Willingham was one of the rare bosses, for whom I was willing to go 100% when he tasked me with projects. I him to sit down with me and break down his journey to VP. I wanted to understand what made him an outlier boss: - Why and How was he so good at running high trust, high velocity teams? - Why does everyone in his 100+ person org say they would work with him again? - How do you build that kind of trust and still keep getting promoted (from IC to VP)? And boy, the conversation surprised me. Instead of only discussing career moves and strategies on how to navigate Big Tech, at times it went very personal. Andrew shared how a health scare actually shook him, and people around him saw that he was completely burnt-out and he had NO IDEA! A few themes that stayed with me: 1. Why decoupling your identity from your role is one of the most underrated unlocks in corporate success 2. How you can be 100% burned out and still tell yourself you’re “fine” 3. The real signal for when it’s time to switch teams or roles 4. What it actually means to “make deals” with your boss and why great operators do this explicitly, not implicitly 5. Doing less is achieving more. When your recharge and disconnect you bring more to the table than just grinding to every notification. Conversations like this make me appreciate how much career success at that level is less about raw intelligence and more about self-awareness, timing, and positioning yourself so luck can actually find you. Youtube: youtu.be/wctq2ozoiUo Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3oq… Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

Excited to share our latest @2048vc thesis series. Here you will find our Thesis on Video as a System of Record. If you are a founder in this space, please reach out! This post is written by @lillyiskold with significant input from @thisiszann and originally appeared on the 2048 Ventures Blog: 2048.vc/blog/our-thesis-on-v… --- Video has become fully commoditized: humanity now captures and consumes information through video more than any other medium. Yet in the physical industries that run the world such as roads, utilities, construction, and maintenance, video is rarely embedded into operational workflows. The ability to capture high-resolution, geolocated video using smartphones, cameras, or drones creates a new opportunity: a continuous visual record of physical assets and environments that unlocks analytics, accountability, and better decision-making. Video is the next foundational data layer Video is becoming a foundational data layer for the physical world. Cheap capture hardware (phones, cameras, drones) combined with rapid advances in AI analytics now makes it viable to operationalize video at scale. As industries face increasing documentation demands, video-based systems of record are positioned to become the next “visual source of truth” for how assets and environments evolve over time. This shift will simplify inspections, maintenance, and planning while creating longitudinal datasets that serve as the backbone for operational decision making. Much like sensors became ubiquitous a decade ago, video is now emerging as the next essential data layer for the real world. Video allows for unique data capture Unlike traditional sensors, video introduces unique insights that make it especially powerful as a system of record. Video can capture: -Temporal change showing how environments evolve week to week, season to season, and year to year. -Spatial context that reveals the relationships between assets, surroundings, and conditions. -High visual fidelity that captures details that sensors or structured measurements cannot express. -Universal usability allowing anyone with a phone or simple camera to collect meaningful data without specialized hardware. These attributes make it possible to create living historical records of roads, properties, assets, and outdoor environments. When video is integrated into operational workflows, it enables automation, richer analytics, stronger defensibility, and more informed decision-making over time. We see video system of records across many industries Here are some recent examples where we have seen opportunities for video systems of record. -Roads & Municipal Infrastructure: cities must routinely document the condition of roads, sidewalks, and other public assets. Companies like Infrahub show how video enables efficient drive-through capture and produces a historical record that simplifies assessments and change-over-time analysis. -Landscaping & Outdoor Property Services: Landscaping companies return to the same properties weekly, yet work is still documented through manual, inconsistent workflows. Our recent investment in Spruce Systems demonstrates how video will emerge as the system of record for this industry, providing the most reliable way to identify maintenance needs and to capture a longitudinal record of how each property grows, changes, and responds to ongoing care. -Solar & Wind Operations & Maintenance: renewable energy assets degrade continuously, and operators need reliable ways to detect issues early. Solar and wind O&M teams will increasingly rely on 360° cameras to produce comprehensive visual records of equipment conditions and identify anomalies before they become costly failures. -Insurance & Property Claims: claims often rely on photos and adjuster notes, a workflow that can be inconsistent and difficult to audit. Video provides richer, more objective evidence of damage, simplifying assessment and improving the reliability of the entire claims process. Companies we want to meet We are looking for founders building video-first systems that become the operational backbone of their industries. The most compelling companies in this space will: -Start with simple, low-cost capture, using phones, 360° cameras, drones, or other commodity hardware already present in the field. -Transform raw video into structured, measurable insights through analytical models that detect conditions and flag anomalies. -Leverage longitudinal video archives to build proprietary models, enabling automation, predictive capabilities, and defensibility that compounds with every capture. -Establish themselves as the “visual source of truth” that teams rely on to understand the state of assets, properties, or environments over time. If you are a founder working in the space, we'd love to connect: 2048.vc/pitch-us

🚨Well, I'm taking the leap... I’m launching an independent media company, The Aisle (@ReadTheAisle), dedicated to in-depth reporting on the AI era of commerce. Whether you call it agentic, conversational, or AI-powered commerce, what's clear to me is that we’re on the cusp of the biggest shift in how the world buys and sells in decades. The Aisle will publish weekly, in-depth stories + exclusive interviews, and jump on scoops and breaking analysis when news demands it. The newsletter is powered by @beehiiv's Media Collective. The Aisle is backed by my 12 years covering tech + commerce and the deep network I’ve built across retail and Silicon Valley. It’s for: • Leaders at brands + retailers navigating what AI means for their customers...and their business • Builders inside AI labs, tech giants, and startups reinventing online shopping • Investors backing this next wave The first issue hits paid subscribers this Thursday. 👉 Subscribe: readtheaisle.com/join I can't wait to show you what I've been working on. I'm thrilled I'll continue hosting events with Fortune—more to come on my gratitude for that amazing crew—including Brainstorm AI in San Francisco this December. But I'm ready now to also build a company and community of my own. If you or your org wants to collaborate, sponsor, or bring me in to speak about this transformation, my DMs are open.