Writing on building, AI, and mission-driven companies.https://michaelrad.me/https://michaelrad.me/blog/time-train/https://michaelrad.me/blog/time-train/Reading DK's Timelines of Everything with my daughter kept leaving us curious to see what we'd just read about, so I built a kid-friendly companion that pairs every spread in the book with one short video.Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTprojectsfamilyhttps://michaelrad.me/blog/second-opinion/https://michaelrad.me/blog/second-opinion/I kept copying feedback back and forth between Claude and ChatGPT, so I asked Claude to work with ChatGPT until they reached a consensus.Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTaiprojectshttps://michaelrad.me/blog/call-notes/https://michaelrad.me/blog/call-notes/I love Granola, but its phone app failed to upload two of my three call transcripts this week. So I spent an afternoon building my own version that saves every call to my Obsidian notes.Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTprojectsaihttps://michaelrad.me/blog/rad-mobility/https://michaelrad.me/blog/rad-mobility/ Yes, I'm 43 and prioritizing mobility.Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTprojectshealthhttps://michaelrad.me/blog/radresale-postmortem/https://michaelrad.me/blog/radresale-postmortem/RadResale worked. The shops I met needed more customers, and meeting that need required a different kind of company.Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTprojectshttps://michaelrad.me/blog/mcp-or-api/https://michaelrad.me/blog/mcp-or-api/Connecting tools to an AI setup, you get two doors, the buzzy one (MCP) and the boring one (a direct API connection). More often than not I went with boring, and I wanted to share what I learned along the way.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTaiautomationhttps://michaelrad.me/blog/annotations-log/https://michaelrad.me/blog/annotations-log/An automation I wish we had from the beginning. This one scans Slack, QuickBooks, Shopify, Klaviyo etc monthly and records every any decision or event that might notably nudge the business and adds them to a google sheet.Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTautomationaihttps://michaelrad.me/blog/how-id-allocate-10m-in-consumer/https://michaelrad.me/blog/how-id-allocate-10m-in-consumer/A friend posed a question I hadn't framed for myself: "How would I allocate $10M into a consumer AI holdco today?" Here's what I'd do.Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTideasaihttps://michaelrad.me/blog/permit-data-playbook/https://michaelrad.me/blog/permit-data-playbook/Five months consulting for a Los Angeles home services company between Holstee runs, the permit-driven outreach system and what it produced.Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTgrowthhttps://michaelrad.me/blog/holstee-sprint-week-three/https://michaelrad.me/blog/holstee-sprint-week-three/Holstee's 14-year old KPI sheet started filling itself in, QuickBooks came off manual export, and Google's AI Overview showed up in the search numbers.Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTholsteeautomationhttps://michaelrad.me/blog/holstee-sprint-week-two/https://michaelrad.me/blog/holstee-sprint-week-two/Two refreshes shipped, the April health report ran, and the Pinterest API saga ended in a clean decision.Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTholsteeautomationhttps://michaelrad.me/blog/holstee-sprint-week-one/https://michaelrad.me/blog/holstee-sprint-week-one/First sprint kicked off: one post refreshed by hand, and the Shopify automation set up to take over from here.Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTholsteegrowthhttps://michaelrad.me/blog/back-to-holstee/https://michaelrad.me/blog/back-to-holstee/Stepping back in part-time for an 8-week run to modernize what's worth modernizing.Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTholsteehttps://michaelrad.me/blog/rebuilding-michaelrad-me/https://michaelrad.me/blog/rebuilding-michaelrad-me/Why I rebuilt this site and powered by a note taking app. Here's the stack, how I did it, and what I'd do again.Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTprojects