Field notes from our engagements, essays on AI maturity and delivery discipline, and chapters from the published frameworks. Written by Himanshu Niranjani.
You cannot fix the Hidden Year with a strategy memo. You fix it with infrastructure, sequence, and a self-funding mechanism the CFO will defend in front of the board. The playbook.
AI-Proofing the Portfolio · 8 minMay 19, 2026Every portfolio company in your fund is paying an invoice you have never seen — two to six million dollars a year, disguised as ordinary technology spend. Let's do the math.
AI-Proofing the Portfolio · 8 minMay 12, 2026Almost every senior dealmaker at this year's Milken Global said the same thing: AI has turned exit modeling into a blindfolded dart throw. They are not wrong — and they are not done paying for it.
AI-Proofing the Portfolio · 7 minApr 07, 2026Recently, a World Bank report highlighted a sobering reality about our physical infrastructure: we have reached our 2030 global waste projections years ahead of schedule. In 2022 alone, the world produced a staggering 2.56 billion tons of municipal solid waste, and we are on a…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 2 minMar 27, 2026Lead Happy, Work Techie Leadership Insights From Himanshu Niranjani The Silent Architect of Resilient Culture: Leading From the Back Created on 2026-03-27 01:55 Published on 2026-03-27 02:06 The Silent Architect: Leading From the Back In over 25 years of navigating engineering…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 6 minMar 24, 2026We are living through one of the loudest, most chaotic moments in the history of enterprise technology. Right now, in boardrooms across the globe, the mandate is identical: Deploy AI immediately. Drive exponential growth. Do not get left behind. The pressure is immense, but the…
Building AI for Humans · 2 minMar 02, 2026Lead Happy, Work Techie Leadership Insights From Himanshu Niranjani Interstellar Leadership: 24 Billion Kilometers from Home Created on 2026-03-02 15:47 Published on 2026-03-02 15:53 Reflections on the Golden Record, the Immigrant Experience, and the Art of the "Run" Right now,…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 3 minFeb 18, 2026The technology market is currently vibrating with a level of volatility we haven't seen in decades. While models like Claude Sonnet 4.6 are wreaking havoc on traditional engineering workflows—writing better code, faster, and with more "reasoning" than many mid-level developers—a…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minJan 19, 2026If you are working in tech right now, the noise level is deafening. Between the headlines about AI rewriting our roadmaps, the shifting geopolitical plates affecting global markets, and the anxiety of "doing more with less," it feels like we are constantly debugging a system…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 4 minJan 05, 2026By Himanshu Niranjani The headlines this week have been dominated by a clash of generations. Yann LeCun—a Turing Award winner and indisputable "Godfather of AI"—publicly called out his new boss at Meta, Alexandr Wang, as "inexperienced". To the casual observer, this looks like…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minDec 24, 2025By Himanshu Niranjani I’ve spent the last few weeks walking familiar trails—both literally, on my morning hikes, and metaphorically, as I transition from the structured chaos of the C-Suite back to the raw uncertainty of a founder’s seat. Leaving a role as a CTO or CPTO, where…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 4 minDec 24, 2025By Himanshu Niranjani We are living through a strange paradox in the technology world. On one hand, we see headlines about companies trading thousands of human roles for "AI Agents." On the other, we see the executives of those same companies admitting that trust in these models…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minDec 16, 2025By Himanshu Niranjani Walk into any boardroom or executive dinner in Dubai or Riyadh right now, and you will hear two conflicting whispers. The first is the fear of missing out: "We need an AI strategy immediately." The second is the growing skepticism: "Is this all just a…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minDec 04, 2025We all know the story. You land a job in Big Tech. Heads down, vest stock, climb the ladder—Senior Engineer to Director to VP. Build a solid nest egg. Ride into the sunset. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s stable. It works. But after 25 years building products across five…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 3 minNov 29, 2025By Himanshu Niranjani I have sat in countless boardrooms across the Middle East over the last year. The energy is undeniable. The mandate from the board and the shareholders is clear: "We need AI. Now." But when I look under the hood of most enterprise engineering teams, I don’t…
Building AI for Humans · 4 minNov 13, 2025Over the past year, I’ve had countless conversations with founders, CTOs, and board members across the Middle East about their AI ambitions. The story is often the same — they know AI is here, they know they can’t afford to ignore it, and yet they don’t know where to start. Most…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minNov 08, 2025There’s a lot of excitement (and noise) right now around AI. Every boardroom slide, investor deck, or company all-hands seems to include the word “AI-powered” somewhere. But here’s the hard truth: most companies don’t know where they are on their AI journey — and that’s exactly…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minNov 02, 2025Every CTO I’ve spoken to in the past 12 months has said the same thing: “We know AI is here. We just don’t know how to move forward.” They’ve got board pressure, investor curiosity, and vendor noise — all converging into one loud, chaotic chorus promising “AI transformation.”…
Building AI for Humans · 4 minOct 26, 2025In a recent mentoring conversation, someone asked me why certain people with similar backgrounds, mentors, or even roles in big companies like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, LinkedIn—or even brands like Harley-Davidson or Visible—go on to thrive, while others plateau or stagnate. It’s…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 2 minOct 16, 2025I recently came across an article about a well-meaning but poorly thought-out infrastructure experiment in Malaysia. The idea? “Illuminated roads” — glow-in-the-dark highways designed to reduce electricity use while increasing safety. It sounded like a cool tech solution. Low…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minOct 04, 2025Someone recently commented on one of my LinkedIn posts and asked: “What’s one thing you wish every new hire already understood about building scalable systems?” That question made me reflect deeply—not just on the technical nuances of scale, but on what I’ve learned through…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 4 minOct 01, 2025Electricity didn’t change the world because of lightbulbs. It changed the world because leaders had the vision (and courage) to build power plants, lay down grids, and wire entire cities before most people even understood why. AI today is at the same point. The technology works.…
Building AI for Humans · 2 minSep 27, 2025Every gym has three kinds of people. And if you’ve been around AI long enough, you’ll notice the same patterns play out in our industry. The Disciplined Regulars: Muscle Built Slowly, Not Overnight The people who get results at the gym aren’t the ones who come once in a while…
Building AI for Humans · 2 minSep 11, 2025When I first started out in leadership, I was like many others—drawn to dashboards. Charts, KPIs, productivity scores, engagement stats — they gave me a sense of control. I believed that if I just tracked the right metrics, progress would follow. But over time, I’ve realized…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 3 minAug 28, 2025Walking the Same Trail, Becoming a Different Self Last week, I returned to the same dusty trails I walked years ago. The fences, the winding path, even the quiet rustle of the breeze were unchanged. Yet as my footsteps fell into rhythm, one truth became clear: the trail is the…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minAug 23, 2025Over the past two years at Property Finder, I’ve often reflected on how my journey here stacks up against my time at big tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, LinkedIn, and others. The contrast has been both refreshing and eye-opening—and for engineers and leaders considering…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 2 minAug 17, 2025When people talk about building great platforms, the conversation too often drifts toward scale, market cap, or user growth. These are important outcomes, but they are not the essence. True greatness doesn’t come from quarterly numbers or stock market dominance — it comes from…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 4 minAug 03, 2025It's widely reported that Mark Zuckerberg, in the quest for AI dominance, have started an unprecedented talent war – wooing top researchers with eye-popping compensation. This article is my advice to him (and other leaders) to avoid mistake he made when he went after the…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 7 minAug 02, 2025#PFIkigai #AIatPF #HumanPoweredAI #IkigaiSeries When I first read the now classic Harvard Business Review piece, “Roaring Out of Recession,” I bookmarked one line: “Companies that master the delicate balance between cutting costs to survive today and investing to grow tomorrow…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minJul 27, 2025What a 500-year-old palace in Rajasthan and a single malt from the Scottish Highlands taught me about timeless leadership Recently, while traveling through India, I found myself in Udaipur , Rajasthan—often called the City of Lakes, but more deeply, the city of heritage and soul…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 3 minJul 21, 2025On my recent visit to Italy, I discovered this new fragrance, and I love reading about how people build complex fragrances. So I researched about it and was fascinated by the history of it. Originally crafted in 1916 in a small perfumer’s lab in Parma, Italy, Acqua di Parma…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 3 minJul 17, 2025For decades, there’s been a prevailing belief in engineering leadership: hire more senior people, and your platforms will get better. More experience. More reliability. Fewer mistakes. But if there’s one thing AI is forcing us all to do, it’s question old assumptions—and this is…
Building AI for Humans · 4 minJul 13, 2025Here's no one talks about when they dream about the AI, the budget, yeah the capex and opex. The age of AI is arriving fast—but it's arriving in the middle of a fiscal storm. CTOs everywhere are being asked to drive transformation while also cutting costs . To embrace AI-native…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minJul 06, 2025In recent months, DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) has slid from corporate priority to afterthought across many U.S. tech and Fortune 500 companies. Mentions of “DEI” in S&P 500 filings dropped by nearly two-thirds in 2024, reaching their lowest level since 2020. Giants like…
Lead Happy, Work Techie · 3 minJul 05, 2025Recently at a customer meeting, I was talking to one of our biggest client in Bahrain who happened to have Indian roots. shared with him how AI isn't something just came to the tech scene. I reflected on how in my college computer lab in 1995, I wrote my first program on what…
Building AI for Humans · 5 minJun 30, 2025The first time I tasted vegetarian pho was at the Microsoft cafeteria in Redmond. It was an unusually cold Seattle afternoon, and I was rushing between meetings when I took a chance on the Vietnamese soup I’d only vaguely heard of before. That bowl of pho changed something for…
Building AI for Humans · 3 minReal engagement learnings, not generic AI thought leadership. We publish when there's something worth saying — and stay quiet when there isn't.