Making Cents Sense

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Don’t Chase the AI Hype—Own the Infrastructure Powering It

I used to think investing in AI meant picking the smartest company in the room. Find the one with the best model. The flashiest demo. The CEO who talks like they’re one product launch away from rewriting reality. Buy the stock, sit back, and let the future compound. That worked—briefly. Then I realized something uncomfortable. The real money isn’t always in the intelligence. It’s in the infrastructure that makes intelligence possible. And once that clicked, I stopped looking at AI like a software story and started seeing it for what it really is: an industrial revolution disguised as code. The Illusion of the “AI Company” Everyone wants to own the next breakthrough model. It feels intuitive. Intelligence is the product, right? But here’s the problem: intelligence is becoming commoditized faster than people want to admit. Models improve, competitors catch up, open-source alternatives emerge, and suddenly what looked like a moat starts to feel like a temporary lead. Meanwhile...

Durable Growth in Saturated Markets (Or: How I Learned to Stop Chasing “New” and Start Outlasting Everyone Else)

I used to think growth meant expansion. New customers. New markets. New products. New everything. If it wasn’t new, it wasn’t growth—at least that’s what I believed for a long time. And honestly, that belief worked… right up until it didn’t. Because eventually, you run into a wall. Not a dramatic, obvious wall. Not the kind that announces itself with flashing lights and a warning sign. No, this one is quieter. Subtler. It creeps up on you in the form of diminishing returns, rising competition, and that uncomfortable realization that everyone else had the exact same idea you did. Welcome to saturation. And once you’re there, all those strategies built on “just go get more” start to feel a little… naive. The Moment I Realized “More” Wasn’t the Answer I remember the exact phase when things stopped scaling the way I expected. Effort went up. Results… didn’t. I was doing more outreach, producing more content, exploring more channels—basically throwing everything I had at the ide...

Quality at Scale: Why I’m Obsessed With Dominant Platform Businesses (and Why You Probably Should Be Too)

I’ll admit it: I used to chase excitement. Not in relationships—well, maybe there too—but definitely in investing. I wanted the next big thing. The undiscovered gem. The company nobody was talking about yet. The one that would 10x while everyone else was still arguing about valuation models and “fair price.” You know what I got? A portfolio full of “almosts,” “what ifs,” and a few very humbling reminders that just because something is early doesn’t mean it’s good . Eventually, I got tired of being early. So I did something radical. I started paying attention to companies that were already winning. Not kind of winning. Not “on the verge.” I mean dominating . And that’s when I stumbled into what I now think is one of the most misunderstood—and underappreciated—concepts in investing: Quality at scale. More specifically: dominant platform businesses . What I Mean by “Quality at Scale” (Because Everyone Throws Around “Quality” Like It’s Confetti) Let’s get something straigh...

The Slowdown Advantage: Opportunity After Growth Deceleration

There was a time—not long ago—when I believed growth was the only thing that mattered. Not profitability. Not sustainability. Not even basic logic. Just growth. User growth. Revenue growth. “We’re growing faster than we can handle” growth. The kind of growth that makes executives smile like they just discovered fire, while quietly setting the building on it. I didn’t just believe in growth—I worshipped it. If a company was growing at 40%, I was interested. If it was growing at 60%, I was excited. If it was growing at 100%, I was emotionally invested in ways that should probably be discussed with a professional. And then something happened. The growth… slowed. The Moment Growth Betrayed Me It always starts the same way. A company reports earnings. Everything looks fine—until you hit the one number that matters. Growth. And suddenly, it’s not 60% anymore. It’s 25%. And that 25%—which, in any normal universe, would be considered absurdly good—feels like a personal attack....

From Disruptor to Cash Machine: The Second Life of Growth Stocks

I used to think growth stocks were the rock stars of the market—loud, reckless, overhyped, and somehow always one earnings call away from either superstardom or total collapse. You didn’t buy them for stability. You bought them for the story. The vision. The disruption. The intoxicating promise that this company is going to change everything. And for a while, that was enough. But somewhere along the way—somewhere between the 10th “adjusted EBITDA” explanation and the 47th “we’re prioritizing growth over profitability” speech—I started to notice something strange. The disruptors were growing up. And not in a glamorous, headline-grabbing way. No. They were turning into something far more interesting. They were becoming… cash machines. The Fantasy Phase: Growth at All Costs (And I Mean All Costs) Let’s rewind to the beginning—the part investors love to romanticize. This is the phase where growth stocks are all potential and no responsibility. Revenue is exploding. Margins ar...