Clairvoyez - the Skeptical Optimist

  Picture this: It’s 2030. The mid-day sun over Surat is not just browning your papad—it’s topping-up your bank account. That’s not utopian frosting; it’s the plain trajectory of India’s energy market. Why “green” demand is about to go steroidal Triple-speed global surge: The IEA’s Renewables 2024 outlook says the world will add 5,500 GW of renewable capacity between 2024-2030—three times the growth of the last six years. India is the fastest-growing major player in that pack. Home-grown sprint: In the past decade our solar base has shot from 2.8 GW to 100 GW —a 3,450 % leap.  Momentum, not a moment: Total renewables now stand above 209 GW , up nearly 16 % year-on-year .  The 500 GW North-Star: New Delhi’s policy compass is locked on 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 . Missing that target would mean missing global capital, so expect policy tail-winds, not head-winds.  Subsidies you can touch: One million homes have already tapped the PM ...

You know that old line: “Half the money I spend on marketing is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half” ? Well, in 2025, AI knows exactly which half — and it’s coming for your job and your punchlines. Thanks to MartechDay’s State of Martech 2025 report (shoutout to the fine print that says it’s “sponsored by vendors”), we now have a front-row seat to the shifting sands of this $500B circus. Here's what’s winning, what’s walking offstage, and which tools marketers are pretending to understand during meetings. What’s Hot (a.k.a. Please tell me this is already in your stack) AI that actually does things Not just “insights” — we’re talking orchestration. AI now builds campaigns, tests variations, personalizes content, and books yoga retreats for stressed CMOs. If your martech doesn’t come with a ‘decide for me’ button, it’s behind. Composable stacks The monoliths are out. Everyone wants to build their own frankenstack — a little CDP here, a touch of analytics th...

Not too long ago, learning a new language meant committing to clunky apps that gamified your grammar lessons with neon badges and condescending owls. You had your Duolingo streaks, your Babbel audio bites, and your endless decks of flashcards designed to help you distinguish between la pomme and le problème . And to be fair, some of them did their job reasonably well. Babbel , for instance, always struck me as the grown-up in the room. It wasn’t obsessed with just feeding you vocabulary; it actually cared about pronunciation, sentence construction, and making you sound less like a tourist holding a phrasebook upside down. It deserved its praise. For a while, I would’ve sworn by it—especially over the dopamine-junkie design of Duolingo. But then I did something dangerous. I asked ChatGPT to teach me French. And now, I can’t unsee the obvious. The Argument for Language Apps: The Last Stand Let’s be fair before we swing the axe. Apps like Babbel and Rosetta Stone did solve rea...

You can wow the CxO all you want. Dazzling dashboards, ROI models, “synergy” slides—cool. But if the business user hates your product, congratulations—you’ve just bought yourself a churn problem. In the real world, software that only works for the buyer but not for the doer becomes shelfware faster than you can say “let’s circle back.” Enter: Hook and Punch™. It’s not a fight. It’s a sequence. You hook the business user. Give them something they’ll actually want to use. Then you punch the decision maker. Not with force, but with undeniable value. If you reverse it—or worse, skip the hook—you’re setting yourself (and your post-sale team) up for failure. Let’s talk about how to do it right. 🪝 First, the Hook: Win Over the Day-to-Day Doer Business users are the unsung heroes of software success. They’re not on the buying committee. They don’t sign contracts. But they live inside the product every single day. If they love it, they make your product sticky. If they hate ...

I often find myself wondering: if AI is truly the future, why hasn't it replaced middle management yet? I mean, isn't that the logical step? A well-tuned Responsible AI could probably do their job better—efficiently delegating tasks, tracking progress, and most importantly, not interfering with the brilliant Individual Contributors (ICs) who are actually, you know, getting things done. If you work in tech—especially in enterprise software, whether product or services—you've likely encountered the same phenomenon. These "people managers" who are somehow entrusted with overseeing high-functioning teams despite having no discernible skills beyond scheduling meetings and writing performance reviews riddled with corporate buzzwords. If they were removed from the equation tomorrow, would anyone even notice? (Other than HR scrambling to rename their job roles to something even more vague, of course.) I dream of a future—hopefully sooner rather than later—where true leade...

I had a great chat earlier today that got me thinking more deeply about something I’ve been watching closely: the future of AI and robotics in high-risk, low-skill manual labor. It’s a topic that comes up often, and for good reason—it touches on real human safety, operational efficiency, and the next phase of automation. Here's where my head's at right now. Where We’re Headed in the Next 1–3 Years The synergy between AI and robotics is very real , especially in environments where the work is dangerous, repetitive, or just plain thankless. But—(there’s always a but)—widespread adoption won’t be purely driven by what’s technically possible. It’ll come down to a mix of economics, regulation, and practical viability . Some areas where we're already seeing strong traction: 1. Manufacturing & Warehousing This one’s a no-brainer. Robotic arms guided by AI vision are welding, lifting, sorting—doing the stuff that breaks backs and burns out humans. Tesla, Amazon, Boston D...