Why I Built This

For the most part, everyone in technology and business is worried about one or both of these things right now:

• The executives tend to drive their staff to “Do AI” without a clear understanding of the technology or the risks, driven by FOMO, or “fear of missing out”. Go make us an “AI first company,” so investors will buy our stock in anticipation of Magic AI Money.
• And the very employees being asked to “Do AI” struggle with FOBO, or “fear of being made obsolete”.

Both are trying to manage their risks, but AI right now is more like a genius toddler than an experienced engineer, and if those employees can automate themselves out of their current job, they can automate themselves out of a career.

I started this business to tackle both.

Here is the reality. The pace of change in artificial intelligence is accelerating faster than most institutions can absorb. Whether general or superintelligent AI arrives this year or in five years matters less than the fact that the window to prepare is shorter than people think. It is time for us to put real focus on navigating, surviving, and thriving in a world that is being fundamentally reshaped by this technology. Now.

We are not going to be overprepared for this.

One thing I believe will survive the pace of change we are going to experience in the next five to ten years is the need to hire smart people who know how to use the latest technology to help make better decisions. There is too much risk and too much liability in trusting AI with everything today, but denying its power and usefulness is folly.

We need both. And every business leader looking for help wants to hire smart people obsessed with making themselves smarter. People who can use AI to enhance their thinking with AI rather than abdicate their thinking to AI.

The people with no future in the workforce of 2030 are the ones who treat AI as a substitute for thinking. Passive lookup is not analysis, and AI summarization is not understanding. The value is in the judgment, and judgment requires a human who has done the work to build it.

Herrin Advisory is an AI-powered startup run by seasoned technology and risk leadership. I founded the company to learn how to make myself smarter every day using AI-curated feeds, saving myself from the negative cognitive effects of doomscrolling and social media while meticulously curating credible and varied information sources. Separating signal from noise.

Every artifact published by Herrin Advisory is edited, challenged, published, and narrated by a human. AI is used in gathering, sifting, comparing, countering, challenging, and cross-matching massive amounts of noise each day and filtering for signal, which is then analyzed and augmented by humans based on experience and judgment. The methodology and self-assessment mechanisms are transparent and published, and they evolve over time. As our understanding changes, we evolve. Daily.

The content is published on an explicit commercial model, with multiple audiences. The Pros, corporate professionals seeking tailored analysis, subsidize the business and content creation for the Smart Casuals, the casual readers who value broad perspectives, as well as the Up and Comers, the AI-native builders who are constructing the future. The Smart Casuals share content they find interesting, leading to more Pros and corporate clients. Everyone benefits. The model is transparent because transparency is the product.

If this model is successful, it will be copied. That is fine. Most copycats will fail, because they lack curiosity, sincerity, and discipline and will put out a flabby, AI-generated product.

Employees at Herrin Advisory are customer number one, and we will always eat our own dog food first. Rule number one is to augment and protect the product, and the product is continuous AI-augmented information analysis feeding experienced human judgment. When one of our folks shows up, they are human, augmented by AI, not a 'prompt engineer' disguised as an expert.

At some point, the technology may advance to where this particular form of human-AI collaboration is no longer needed. That is a transition to plan for, rather than a 'threat' to plan against. When the tools change, we will adapt. We have done it before. The people who survive technological disruption are the ones who are already paying attention.

Those who copy the methodology and improve upon it to make themselves smarter are encouraged. Copy away, and rock on. We just ask that you share what you learned so we can all benefit. We are all going to need to be on our A game to navigate this polycrisis humans have built for themselves over the next decade.

Core to that navigation is a shift in thinking from zero-sum to positive-sum. More on that in the thesis, if you care to read it.

For folks like me, born analog and now living digital, the job is to pave the way for the digital and AI natives. As a result, the work products coming from Herrin Advisory are going to straddle the current world of finance, geoeconomics, realpolitik, and cybersecurity while we also rush headlong like an insane horse racing towards a burning stable into the converging crises of climate change, population decline, artificial superintelligence, the end of a world geopolitical order, massive personal and sovereign debt supercycles, and the rise of quantum computing. All in the next ten years or so.

To navigate all this, a few principles guide everything we publish.

My overall business model is simple. Provide commercial value to the professionals while funneling the revenue and guidance to the up-and-comers. A reasonable chunk in the middle funds the operation and its employees.

That is why I am building this. There is a polycrisis of our own creation to navigate, and a big beautiful world out there just waiting to be built. Let's get to it.