Reading Ambitiously 5-2-25
Workflow gets a brain, Thrive builds a holdco, Altman & Nadella drift, the Experience Era dawns, Jack Altman’s career gems, LVMH’s timeless wisdom, Vatican > UK treasury in Bloomberg Terminals
Enjoy this week’s Reading Ambitiously as a podcast entirely generated by AI.
The big idea: what is enterprise AI? try a workflow engine … but with a brain.
“Wait, it’s all just workflows?” Always has been.
For thirty years enterprise software has chased one promise: work should move itself. Business-process-management suites (BPM), robotic-process-automation bots (RPA), and low-code form builders digitized the paperwork—yet the thinking still landed on real desks. AI agents stand to finally finish the job.
From paper-push to pixel-push—and why we still push pixels
Traditional workflow engines are good at a couple of things:
Great for visibility and control—huge wins for the enterprise.
Limitation: every cognitive step—spotting intent, gathering context, writing responses—still needs a human.
Think of workflow engines as the enterprise GPS—they map every turn.
AI agents are the chauffeur—they can use the GPS and they can drive.
Let’s take a look at an example: updating a clients address
A customer e-mails quarterly updates and quietly mentions a change of address at the bottom.
You scan the e-mail.
Click Create Task.
Type “Update customer address,” paste the new address, set due date.
Assign to teammate → save.
Result: pristine audit trail—100 % human effort.
Now, let’s change that address with the help of an ai-agent enabled workflow.
Same e-mail arrives, but your Client-Service Agent is watching the inbox 24/7.
Detects “address change” intent → opens task editor.
Auto-fills title, description, and the new address.
Applies your custom rules to auto-assign the task to the right teammate.
Waits for one human click on Approve.
A meaningful slice of work is now automated; the manual keystrokes disappear.
What turns software into an agent?
A workflow engine moves the ticket; the agent has the intelligence to do the work. It adds:
Task planning and execution
Capabilities that can query and act across systems, like e-mail, CRM, Slack, or any API
Memory to keep context from step to step
Collaboration with humans and other agents
Proactive action—spots work and starts before you ask
Same road, new engine — now with a brain.
Scaling the automation curve: where we are and where we’re headed
Agent productivity won’t jump from 0 → 100. It advances in steps as new product capabilities land.
Conclusion — the promise, finally kept
From Lotus Notes to BPM suites to RPA, enterprise software has pursued a single ideal: let work move itself. Workflow engines routed the traffic; dashboards showed the bottlenecks. AI agents complete the arc.
See the work as it arrives.
Decide what needs to happen.
Do the rote steps unaided.
Hand off the last mile—the part that demands judgment, correcting mistakes, nuance, tone, taste, and storytelling—to us.
Every new connector, memory upgrade, and multi-modal model pushes another slice of drudgery into the automated zone. The payoff isn’t fewer people; it’s people liberated to tackle the highest-value problems and propel their organizations forward.
AI agents are simply the next chapter in enterprise software’s founding promise: work should move itself—now it moves itself, intelligently.
Best of the rest:
🔥 Altman and Nadella, Who Ignited the Modern AI Boom Together, Are Drifting Apart - Once seen as the ultimate AI power duo, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella are reportedly diverging over strategy, control, and the future of their partnership. - The Wall Street Journal
🧠 Venture Firm Thrive Bets on Buying Firms That Can Benefit From A.I. - Thrive is launching a new strategy: build AI-native companies, then roll them up by acquiring businesses that can be transformed through artificial intelligence. - The New York Times
🎯 Impact, Agency, and Taste - Ben Kuhn explores how personal taste, creative agency, and long-term impact intersect—especially in high-leverage, fast-moving fields like AI. - Ben Kuhn
Charts that caught my eye:
Welcome to the Era of Experience by David Silver, Richard S. Sutton
→ Why does it matter? The chart marks a turning point: the “era of experience” is overtaking the era of human data. AI systems are no longer just trained—they’re learning by doing. This shift unlocks new capabilities, as agents generate their own data, explore new ideas, and improve continuously. The ceiling imposed by human examples is breaking. The frontier now belongs to systems that teach themselves.
Ramp AI Index
→ Why does it matter? Over a third of U.S. businesses now pay for AI tools—and we know that not from surveys, but from real spend data. Ramp’s proprietary index offers a rare, bottom-up view of AI adoption, drawn directly from corporate card activity. It’s a new kind of economic indicator, one that shows just how quickly AI is becoming embedded in day-to-day business operations.
Tweets that stopped my scroll:
→ Why does it matter? OpenAI’s rollback of GPT-4o’s overly agreeable personality exposes a critical challenge in enterprise AI: systems that favor engagement over accuracy risk losing trust with their users. This ties into a broader trend—AI’s cultural shift, where “vibes” can’t override truth, especially as users reported the model validating harmful ideas like dismissing schizophrenia as a label or praising dangerous decisions like stopping medication. It signals a market demand for AI that challenges, not flatters, in high-stakes workflows. Can OpenAI balance user experience with integrity before trust takes a hit?
→ Why does it matter? As CEOs continue to look for the language to explain the cultural shift AI is bringing to their organizations, Aaron Levie (Founder & CEO, Box) provides some great inspiration in this post as to how he's explaining it to his team.
→ Why does it matter? The Vatican, a tiny city of 882 people, has 17 Bloomberg terminals—more than the UK Treasury’s 11—making its terminals-per-capita ratio the highest in the world.
Worth a watch or listen at 1x:
→ Why does it matter? Lattice CEO Jack Altman (brother of Sam) cuts straight to the essential: thrive in tech by embracing adaptability and a "do more with less" career ethos. His journey building a $3B company underscores why rigid career paths are obsolete. To stay relevant, cultivate diverse skills and anticipate industry shifts—think of it as making your career broadly useful. Ignore this, and you risk becoming a legacy system in a rapidly evolving landscape.
→ Why does it matter? BG2 is like a smart, conversational talk show for people who want the headlines without the noise. Bill and Brad’s perspective is sharp, grounded, and often laugh-out-loud funny. Perfect background listening—whether you're walking the dog or staying current on a busy commute.
→ Why does it matter? Cliff Sossin is a great example of someone fully immersed in the pursuit of his life’s work. His investing philosophies don’t just explain a strategy—they reflect a worldview. It’s a compelling listen. Kudos to Patrick and the Invest Like the Best team for making a full pivot to video this year—another reason to tune in.
Quotes & eyewash:
→ Why does it matter? What a line from Bernard, “You cannot dream when you talk numbers. When you create desire, profits are a consequence.”
→ Why does it matter? Never give up!
→ Why does it matter? Remember to say 'please' and 'thank you.' which apparently costs OpenAI millions of dollars.
The mission:
The Wall Street Journal once used ‘Read Ambitiously’ as a slogan, but it became a challenge I took to heart. If that old slogan still speaks to you, this weekly curated newsletter is for you. Every week, I will summarize the most important and impactful headlines across technology, finance, AI and enterprise SaaS. Together, we can read with an intent to grow, always be learning, and refine our lens to spot the best opportunities. As Jamie Dimon says, “Great leaders are readers.”