Knowing which thing to make

The work used to be making the thing. Now it's knowing which thing to make.

I spent the first half of my career optimizing for execution speed. I could turn a brief into a deliverable faster than almost anyone I knew. It felt like an edge.

Then the tools caught up. A founder with a tasteful eye and a paid Cursor subscription can ship a presentable v1 over a weekend. Execution stopped being scarce. Judgment became the bottleneck.

What I'm trying to get good at now isn't faster Figma or sharper code. It's the layer above — what to build, what to leave out, when to push, when to ship.