A Front Row Seat to the New Industrial Revolution

I wanted a front row seat to the new industrial revolution. So I quit.

That's the short version. The longer one: I spent 15 years in SaaS, rose to a senior operator role, then walked away from a lucrative tech executive seat in August 2025. People hear that and assume it was reckless. I'd argue the reckless move was staying.

As a leader, I was "implementing" AI in meetings and slide decks. I wasn't actually building with it. The gap between those two things got wider every month I sat on the wrong side of it.

Doing nothing is also a choice

Staying on trajectory as a VP or COO for another SaaS business carried its own risk and opportunity cost. That's the part people skip. They price the risk of leaving and forget that the default path has a price tag too.

I looked at the next few years and decided the riskier bet was to keep renting out my time to someone else's roadmap while the ground shifted under all of us. So I left to follow my curiosity: build with AI, buy assets that cash flow, and see what happened.

What the front row actually showed me

I built and launched a profitable SaaS business in a matter of months. Solo founder, zero Python skills. A production grade CRM that would have taken a team of 10 over a year to build not too long ago.

Then I started bolting AI agents onto it to help me operate. There isn't enough time in one day to fix bugs, answer customers, ship features, and run a go-to-market motion by yourself. So I stopped trying to do it alone and built a team out of agents instead.

When I left my last role in August of 2025, I thought I knew what AI could do.

I had no idea.

The part I didn't plan for

Sharing this story has opened doors I wasn't aiming at. Speaking invitations. And lately, companies asking me to help deploy their own AI agents.

A single talk a few weeks ago turned into 2 proposals. I didn't pitch anything. I just described what I'd built and how, and two companies in the room wanted to know if I'd do it for them.

So I'm taking the conversations and following where they lead. It's the same curiosity that made me leave, just pointed at other people's businesses now. And if I ever do go back to corporate, I'll be a sharper, better informed leader for it (a good CEO would see that in about 5 minutes).

The boring half: how I de-risked the leap

None of this would have felt survivable without the unglamorous work I did before I ever handed in my notice. I'm an optimist, but I plan for the worst. I think we're headed for some genuinely unpredictable years, and that means putting my family in the best position to weather whatever shows up.

So before I left, I focused relentlessly on cash flow. My first several months out were spent stacking more of it:

• A short-term rental
• A shopping center
• 2 syndications
• All in under 6 months

The goal is 100% coverage of our cost of living from assets, outside of any AI or software earnings. Close, but not quite there yet. That coverage is what buys optionality and peace of mind. It's what lets me say yes to a curiosity and no to a paycheck.

This took years of budgeting and sacrifice to set up. I even moved my family from San Diego to Sacramento. A 30% drop in costs plus my wife's family nearby made that one an easy call. I miss the weather. I sleep much better at night.

The throughline is optionality

Here's the equation as I think about it. Cash flow covers the downside. AI widens the upside. Together they buy the one thing I actually care about, which is the freedom to follow my curiosity without betting the house on it.

Most people optimize for net worth. I get it, I did that for a while. But net worth is a scoreboard, and scoreboards stay hypothetical until you sell. Cash flow is what pays the mortgage when the W-2 disappears, and time is the only asset that doesn't compound. I'd rather buy time back than watch a number go up.

That's the real reason the leap wasn't as risky as it sounds. I didn't bet everything on a single outcome. I built a floor out of cash flow, then used AI to push the ceiling higher, and the gap between the two is where the optionality lives.

So I'll keep pushing on AI while I keep stacking cash flow. Following the curiosity, building furiously, adapting as I go.

The revolution is hiring, and the front row seats are cheaper than people think.