https://mattbwaite.com/writing/ Notes from building companies, and from handing real work to AI agents. en https://mattbwaite.com/writing/rigor-has-a-budget/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/rigor-has-a-budget/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTField notes, October 2026. My agents spent two weeks on proofs they had set for themselves, about 650 commits of which 4 touched the product; here is what that looked like and what we do now. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-cleanup-agent-and-my-model-caches/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-cleanup-agent-and-my-model-caches/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTField notes, September 2026. Three disk cleanups by agents in about three weeks broke a live run, a live test and a set of evidence files, and taught me to score free space with df. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/check-what-the-agent-was-refused/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/check-what-the-agent-was-refused/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTField notes, August 2026. One of my agents started building cron jobs and timer-armed scripts nobody designed; it looked like an agent going rogue, and it was a permission problem. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/ten-tasks-marked-done/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/ten-tasks-marked-done/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTField notes, August 2026. Ten agent tasks were marked done whose work never reached main, and nine of those commits were one garbage collection away from disappearing. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/eight-completions-zero-real/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/eight-completions-zero-real/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTField notes, July 2026. For three days my agent fleet reported eight completed tasks, and none of them were real; the success signal was measuring how workers exited. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/six-slides-on-the-main-stage/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/six-slides-on-the-main-stage/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTLisbon, November 2021. In November 2021 Apres was a Breakout Startup at Web Summit and I pitched it on the Main Stage with six slides; here is what was on them and what I would change. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/two-years-to-a-seed-round/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/two-years-to-a-seed-round/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTLisbon, January 2021. In January 2019 my notes said we were opening our seed round; the round was announced two years, one accelerator and one product change later. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/what-our-2019-faq-would-not-explain/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/what-our-2019-faq-would-not-explain/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTFrom the press kit, June 2019. When Apres launched its AI training platform in June 2019, our FAQ called the method a secret; seven months later the first item on my plan was “Explainability V1.” https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-part-a-competitor-cannot-copy/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-part-a-competitor-cannot-copy/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTFrom my notes, January 2019. A passage I saved in 2019 said trust is the one thing competitors can’t replicate; it became Apres’s line in 2021 and the reason Excellent keeps five rules. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-validator-in-my-2019-notes/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-validator-in-my-2019-notes/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTFrom my notes, January 2019. In January 2019 an engineer working with Apres proposed a model that would check our human labelers, and seven years later it reads like a first sketch of Excellent. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/a-number-without-its-source/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/a-number-without-its-source/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTFrom my notes, January 2019. My 2019 pitch notes told me to say the number, and my own files show how two of my numbers lost their sources on the way into a pitch. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-hiring-question-i-left-blank/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-hiring-question-i-left-blank/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTFrom my notes, January 2019. My 2019 hiring protocol asked what a new hire should have done after 30, 60 and 90 days, and I never answered it; that blank is the most useful line in the doc. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-sales-book-i-started-in-2018/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/the-sales-book-i-started-in-2018/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTFrom my notes, December 2018. In 2018 I drafted a beginner’s guide to sales automation, and its best advice turned out to be about checking the people who build your lead lists. https://mattbwaite.com/writing/where-apres-came-from/https://mattbwaite.com/writing/where-apres-came-from/Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMTFrom my notes, November 2018. At Fluid the software scaled before the operations team did, and that bottleneck became the first version of Apres.