Ali Sohani

Happy for the book Release: The Leader's Manifesto - Principles, Values, and Beliefs to Guide Leader Actions and Decisions. (Finally released after being 3 years under development). More books on the way. Will churn our lot faster. amazon.ca/dp/B0F95SNJDB/…

I optimize for two things: Waking up energized and going to bed exhausted. The former means I’m doing things I enjoy with people I love. The latter means I did those things to the fullest extent of my ability. That’s my recipe for a good life.

@Jason I'm in.

We started an AI founder twitter group... reply with "I'm in" if you're a founder and want to be added

People are so afraid of not having social approval ...and ironically it's the people who are resolutely themselves that everyone ends up admiring, liking or just finding interesting. Being like everyone else is not memorable. It is endlessly boring. Be your quirky self.

Imagine every pixel on your screen, streamed live directly from a model. No HTML, no layout engine, no code. Just exactly what you want to see. @eddiejiao_obj, @drewocarr and I built a prototype to see how this could actually work, and set out to make it real. We're calling it Flipbook. (1/5)

Every wildly successful founder I know has the same traits: - Mad work ethic - Zero shame - Comfort being hated - A little bit of the tism - Some variation of ADHD HR would reject all of them. That's exactly why they win.

Exceptional people are rare. When you find someone wonderful, invest in them. -When you find a great employee, pay them well. -When you find a great friend, prioritize the relationship. -When you find a great spouse, out-love them each day. Relationships are probably the most important part of life. Take care of the great ones.

one of the biggest deal-killers we've seen selling a usage-based product is the "shadow spreadsheet" your prospect is sold on the product. but before they can buy, they need to justify the cost internally so they build a financial model in google sheets. they estimate usage, guess at pricing tiers, and calculate annual cost the problem is they always get at least one assumption wrong. and that one wrong assumption can double the projected cost overnight you will never see this spreadsheet. you will never get to correct it. the deal just dies and you don't know why the fix is what we call the "pre-built business case": 1) after every demo, send them YOUR version of the cost model, pre-populated with realistic assumptions based on discovery (this is why it’s so important to get discovery right) 2) include a tab that shows cost-per-outcome and not just cost-per-credit 3) add a comparison tab vs. their current solution or vs doing it manually if someone else is building the spreadsheet that decides your deal, you've lost control of it

The greatest trait you can acquire is to work with tremendous intensity on things that matter to you, and more importantly, be strangely unbothered when those things don't work out.

In theory, consistency is about being disciplined, determined, and unwavering. In practice, consistency is about being adaptable. Don't have much time? Scale it down. Don't have much energy? Do the easy version. Find different ways to show up depending on the circumstances. Let your habits change shape to meet the demands of the day. Adaptability is the way of consistency.

Major cheat code for life: Stop dragging yesterday into today. The argument. The mistake. The missed chance. It’s already gone. Stop reliving it. Learn fast. Forgive yourself faster. Move forward. Life happens in the direction you face.

Palantir FDEs yearn for scope creep. Do yours?

This is what 400 calories looks like. Same number. Two completely different outcomes.

AI won't make a bad manager good. But it can make a good manager scale. Harvest more data. Connect more dots. Coach more effectively. Develop more leaders. You need to know what excellence look like. But if you do, AI can transform you into a superhuman leader.

I endorse this approach. A career cold start algorithm.

THE BUILD CEILING In the past few weeks, I've seen two different startups lose enterprise deals: one $1M ACV killed at the final stage of approval, another seven-figure ACV (that's been a customer for 2+ years) now on the chopping block. Same reason both times: the buyer decided to build internally instead. This is the new last-mile risk in enterprise sales. If you're selling application layer or workflow software to any team inside an enterprise, think hard before crossing $500k ACV. Above that threshold, your real competition is an internal employee plus an AI coding agent: not the next vendor on the shortlist. The math has shifted. A mid-level engineer or a domain expert with Claude Code or Codex can now replicate a functional workflow tool in weeks. Not a perfect one. Good enough. And "good enough" is all procurement needs to justify the kill. The underlying dynamic: enterprise teams are now being evaluated on AI nativeness. Finance, HR, ops: every functional team has an AI transformation mandate on their 2026 OKRs. The fastest way to demonstrate AI chops is to kill a vendor tool and replace it with something built internally. The switch signals more than cost savings. It signals that the team can build. At $50k ACV, nobody staffs a project to replace you. At $500k+, the VP has a business case that almost writes itself. Pipes products are largely safe: build complexity is high and switching cost is real. But dashboard-style workflow tools: approval flows, reporting layers, lightweight data apps, form-based operations software: these are exactly the category a mid-senior level employee with domain expertise and an AI coding agent can ship in a sprint. Call it the build ceiling (TM). Every application layer startup now has one. Most founders don't know where it sits for their category. Founders selling workflow software: understand your build ceiling and audit every prospect and current customer. And proactively price below the build ceiling: the price point where the ROI of replacing you never pencils out.

Writing is "thinking with clarity".

DHH on Product Management in the age of AI. How relevant it is. And what was the main constraint that blocked the PMs. How throughput of generated code to working software now changes the game.

They just don’t make them like this anymore. Neo is at his most confident, fully aware of his potential, then Rage Against the Machine perfectly starts to play and he literally flies! The Matrix is peak cinema.

Human biological limits, like our tiny working memory and shallow calculation depth, are actually a feature. They force us to abstract, compress, intuit. If we had infinite resources, we would never have needed intelligence.

Good intentions don't make great leaders. Your target week: 10% strategy, 25% talent, 65% ops. Your reality: 2% strategy, 8% talent, 90% ops. Too many leaders let ops crowd out everything. Here's my ideal leadership week, and how I make it a reality: