Think in Horizons, Not Seconds

I've spent the last few months having some very interesting conversations.

Not formal ones. No decks, no agendas. Just honest back-and-forths with customers, partners, fellow tech CEOs, and investors about where things are heading. One thing keeps coming up, no matter who I'm talking to: everyone is moving, but not everyone knows where.

If 2025 felt fast, the first five months of 2026 felt like someone changed the physics.

The wave everyone's riding

Look at almost any SaaS or tech company right now and you'll see some version of the same story. Pivots. Reorgs. Layoffs followed by rehires. And energy, a lot of it, pouring into AI.

Most of it is what I'd call simple AI adoption. Editing content. Writing marketing copy. Pasting numbers into a chatbot to get a quick read on performance. Using AI as a sounding board or a pseudo-consultant. It's everywhere, in every corner of the business.

And you know what? That's fine. It's useful. I do it too.

But it's table stakes now. It's not a competitive advantage. It's just how work gets done.

The more interesting layer, and the riskier one

A smaller group has moved past the basics. They're automating real processes. Building bespoke, focused tools through vibe coding. Some of these are genuinely clever: purpose-built, useful, fast to ship.

But this layer makes me a bit nervous.

We're accumulating a growing sprawl of one-off, disconnected, AI-generated apps. Most will be forgotten within months. Many won't be maintained. And they represent a surface area that's genuinely bad for security and privacy. I'd bet good money we're going to see a wave of data breaches tied directly to this: ungoverned tools, forgotten integrations, code that no one fully understands.

The dev teams I talk to are split right down the middle. Half are leaning in hard, almost cavalier about letting AI write the heavy lifting. The other half are pumping the brakes, worried about governance and what happens when something goes wrong at scale. Both instincts make sense to me.

Something else worth watching

Here's a quieter shift that doesn't get enough attention.

Over the past few weeks, the major AI vendors have been tightening rate limits and raising prices at the same time. It still feels inexpensive given what these tools can do in seconds. But the economics are moving.

If your business is building on top of AI infrastructure, or if your cost model depends on current pricing, now is a good time to pay attention. It won't stay this cheap forever.

The question everyone's actually asking

Here's what I keep hearing underneath all these conversations, even when it isn't said directly:

Are we doing this right?

My honest answer: I don't think there's a "right" yet. But I do think there's a smarter way to think about it.

Most companies are thinking in seconds. What can AI do for me right now? What can I ship this week? That's natural; the tools reward it. But the companies I respect most aren't optimizing for seconds. They're thinking in horizons.

The leaders I see navigating this well aren't the ones explaining their business to an AI from scratch every Monday morning. They're the ones who've built enough clarity about what they're tracking, what they're deciding, and what actually matters, that they can move fast without losing the thread.

Three horizons worth thinking about

Horizon 1 — Now. Explore freely. Learn fast. Use AI everywhere you reasonably can. The experimentation phase isn't over; it's still early enough that learning quickly is a real advantage. Don't sit on the sidelines waiting for a perfect strategy.

Horizon 2 — Next. Start being intentional. Where are you building dependency? Where are you creating technical debt or governance risk? Not every AI shortcut is worth taking. The vibe-coded app that saves you two weeks now might cost you much more later. And if your team is spending time re-explaining your numbers to a tool every time a question comes up, that's a signal: the underlying clarity isn't there yet.

Horizon 3 — Later. This is the most important one. Where does your real value live, the part that AI can't easily commoditize? What do you need to be genuinely good at, not just fast at? That's worth protecting and investing in deliberately. For most leaders, that means knowing your business well enough that you're directing AI, not depending on it to orient you.

A closing thought

Nobody has a crystal ball right now, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

But the pattern I keep seeing in the companies navigating this well isn't about how much AI they're using. It's about how they're thinking. Curious, not panicked. Intentional, not reactive. Playing a longer game while still moving fast.

The ones who get there aren't checking dashboards less. They're checking them with more confidence, because they know the numbers are right and they know what to do with them.

Dive in. Explore. Learn. Question where your next market is and who your next buyer will be.

Just don't think in seconds. Think in horizons.