Just Do Hard Things
Last November, I left my role specifically to step back and think hard about what I wanted the next chapter of my career to be. I knew I wanted to do something different, but I wasn’t exactly sure what. Outside of the role, company, or remit I realized a few very important things:
1- I need hard things that demand more from me than I think I have. That pressure has always (100% of the time) brought out the bigger version of me to show up. If the goal is small, my effort stays small. I do my best work when the challenge is big enough to push me outside of my comfort zone. Without these things, I never reach the next gear.
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2- I’m at my best when I’m building into the future, not replaying a version of the past in an incremental fashion.
3- And I need to do these things with other folks who are also high-agency misfits.
I will always be extremely grateful to Darren Mowry and Paul Soligon for taking a chance on me way back in 2014 and Ed Porter (#3 above!) for mentoring me in the “ways of Ed” (if you have worked with Ed, you know what I mean!) Joining AWS as a seller in 2014 was the best example of #1/#2/#3 . At that time: 1) there was no playbook to “selling” cloud; 2) what customers were doing with AWS was not just a reframe of on-prem, it was fundamentally different and 3) it was my first foray into going from a Sales Engineering org to leading accounts as the AE. It was one of the hardest things I have done, and also one of the most satisfying. The YoY quota growth expectations were hard; getting promoted was hard; thinking through the lens of the customer from an industry lens was hard. The reality is I have had my “head in the cloud” for over a decade now. Cloud is no longer about building into the future, its just status quo.
“Building into the future” in 2026 means AI. I don’t think this is a very controversial take. But what does that mean exactly? My take: AI is a compression algorithm. It compresses the time between idea, solution, sale and impact. It compresses the boundaries between sales, pre-sales, delivery, product and marketing. I’ve been fortunate to have been trusted in roles that span most of those disciplines, and this incoming compression of traditional boundaries is extremely obvious to me. Note: Compression does not mean “disappear entirely”! It means a much tighter, faster and integrated operating model.
When I started using Claude Code, Codex and other tools in November it was akin to the first time I used an iPhone or hailed an Uber. It just felt like magic. I can’t describe it any other way. Many can relate to the ‘iPhone moment’ or ‘Uber moment’. This timing also coincided with the release of Opus 4.5 which was completely game changing from an LLM perspective. Just lucky timing on my part.
After a short break during Thanksgiving, I set out to answer the following question: “With AI tools, can a single person or a much smaller team do it all? Understand the customer problem, go deep into the industry specific workflow, prototype the solution, shape the narrative, test the market, and deliver something real into production?”
I’ve now experienced this first hand. The first product or solution I worked on is in the Healthcare space. What is extremely distracting right now in the AI space is that there are a lot of cool looking demos, “POCs” and things which I would consider “cool toys”, but have zero relevance in actual companies and have NO chance of scaling or making KPI impacts. Sticking with the theme of “doing hard things” I wanted to apply AI into one of the most highly regulated and critical industries in existence: Healthcare. Then I went to another highly regulated industry: Finance.
Both of these solutions are IN PRODUCTION, making real revenue impact TODAY. I am extremely grateful to my network who placed trust in me to get involved in these projects when all I had to trade on was my past performance and then me saying “trust me I’ll lead this and figure this out.” Thank you!
In future posts, I will be detailing and giving practical information on these two solutions, how they were built, and what business impact they are making. I firmly believe that knowledge should be free and customers should pay for outcomes, so I will be sharing as much as possible without violating any NDAs or competitive moats. I previously maintained a technology/business focused blog and presence on twitter (@vjswami) that I let lapse for various reasons. But I’m so energized about this new wave of technology disruption that I’m going to get back to writing and sharing again.
AI is changing the nature of work itself. And I’m here for it. If you have a blended background in engineering/technology & sales you have the highest leverage that you have EVER had. You need to be experimenting with AI tools NOW. Go build something real and try to sell it.... and see what happens. Cloud drastically reduced the cost of experimentation from an infrastructure perspective, and AI is doing the same for apps.
In addition to sharing the technology journey, I hope to also inspire people to find their purpose. I’ll also be talking about new roles that are emerging based on what I’m seeing. Feel free to reach out to me to discuss any of the above.
Let’s go build the future!