Building at the intersection of AI, finance and blockchain
I’m a founder, operator and product leader with more than two decades of experience spanning financial services, software, SaaS, AI, fintech, crypto and startups.
Most of my career has been spent taking complicated technology and turning it into something useful: products people can use, businesses that can scale, and operating models that work in the real world. Today, I’m particularly interested in what happens as AI moves from answering questions to actually doing things. That shift is going to change far more than software. It changes how work gets done, how companies operate and, eventually, how machines participate in the economy.
From finance to AI
My career started in financial services in 1999. Over the years I moved through software development, project management and product management, working on increasingly complex technology across banking and financial markets. That gave me an early view of something that has shaped much of my career since: the biggest changes happen when emerging technology stops being interesting in theory and becomes useful infrastructure.
I encountered blockchain while exploring trading automation in 2013 and became fascinated by the possibilities of programmable, digitally native financial infrastructure. At the same time, I was working increasingly with artificial intelligence and natural-language processing. In 2018, I led a team developing an NLP application whose technology was subsequently granted a patent and used to help automate stenography and support people with auditory disabilities. From there, I moved from large financial institutions into startups, building, running and advising businesses across SaaS, AI, fintech and crypto, including roles as COO, CEO, founder and board adviser.
That combination of regulated finance, technology, product, operations and entrepreneurship heavily influences how I look at what is happening today.
What I'm working on now
A major focus of my work today is AI-native software.
At Alludium, I’m helping build and commercialise a new generation of AI software designed around real professional workflows rather than simply adding an AI assistant to existing software. The area I’m spending an increasing amount of time thinking about is what comes next. Because I don't think the end state of AI is a better chatbot. I think it is an economy of intelligent software capable of carrying out work, making decisions within defined permissions, coordinating with other systems and eventually transacting on its own behalf.
The agentic economy
We are moving from AI that knows to AI that acts.
Today, we mostly interact with AI directly: we ask a question, provide a prompt or give it a task. The next generation will increasingly operate in the background. Agents will research, negotiate, procure, analyse, create, coordinate, buy services, sell services and interact with other agents.
I think of this as the beginning of AI 3.0 - the agentic economy. And once machines become economic participants, some difficult questions appear very quickly.
This is where my interests in AI, financial infrastructure and blockchain increasingly converge. The future of AI isn't only an AI problem. It's an identity problem, a trust problem, a payments problem, a governance problem and an economic infrastructure problem too. That intersection is where I think some of the most important technology of the next decade will be built.
Thinking in public
This site is where I explore those ideas.
I write about AI, the agentic economy, blockchain, crypto, financial technology, startups, product, operations and building companies. Some posts are deep dives. Others are observations about something I've seen, built, learned or got wrong. I don't pretend to have all the answers. The interesting part of emerging technology is trying to understand where it is going before the answers become obvious. If you're interested in the same questions, have a look around.
Dave
I’m a founder, operator and product leader with more than two decades of experience spanning financial services, software, SaaS, AI, fintech, crypto and startups.
Most of my career has been spent taking complicated technology and turning it into something useful: products people can use, businesses that can scale, and operating models that work in the real world. Today, I’m particularly interested in what happens as AI moves from answering questions to actually doing things. That shift is going to change far more than software. It changes how work gets done, how companies operate and, eventually, how machines participate in the economy.
From finance to AI
My career started in financial services in 1999. Over the years I moved through software development, project management and product management, working on increasingly complex technology across banking and financial markets. That gave me an early view of something that has shaped much of my career since: the biggest changes happen when emerging technology stops being interesting in theory and becomes useful infrastructure.
I encountered blockchain while exploring trading automation in 2013 and became fascinated by the possibilities of programmable, digitally native financial infrastructure. At the same time, I was working increasingly with artificial intelligence and natural-language processing. In 2018, I led a team developing an NLP application whose technology was subsequently granted a patent and used to help automate stenography and support people with auditory disabilities. From there, I moved from large financial institutions into startups, building, running and advising businesses across SaaS, AI, fintech and crypto, including roles as COO, CEO, founder and board adviser.
That combination of regulated finance, technology, product, operations and entrepreneurship heavily influences how I look at what is happening today.
What I'm working on now
A major focus of my work today is AI-native software.
At Alludium, I’m helping build and commercialise a new generation of AI software designed around real professional workflows rather than simply adding an AI assistant to existing software. The area I’m spending an increasing amount of time thinking about is what comes next. Because I don't think the end state of AI is a better chatbot. I think it is an economy of intelligent software capable of carrying out work, making decisions within defined permissions, coordinating with other systems and eventually transacting on its own behalf.
The agentic economy
We are moving from AI that knows to AI that acts.
Today, we mostly interact with AI directly: we ask a question, provide a prompt or give it a task. The next generation will increasingly operate in the background. Agents will research, negotiate, procure, analyse, create, coordinate, buy services, sell services and interact with other agents.
I think of this as the beginning of AI 3.0 - the agentic economy. And once machines become economic participants, some difficult questions appear very quickly.
- How does an agent prove who it is?
- What is it authorised to do?
- Who owns what?
- How does it transfer value?
- How do we create an immutable record of what happened?
- How do millions, potentially billions, of autonomous systems transact with one another?
This is where my interests in AI, financial infrastructure and blockchain increasingly converge. The future of AI isn't only an AI problem. It's an identity problem, a trust problem, a payments problem, a governance problem and an economic infrastructure problem too. That intersection is where I think some of the most important technology of the next decade will be built.
Thinking in public
This site is where I explore those ideas.
I write about AI, the agentic economy, blockchain, crypto, financial technology, startups, product, operations and building companies. Some posts are deep dives. Others are observations about something I've seen, built, learned or got wrong. I don't pretend to have all the answers. The interesting part of emerging technology is trying to understand where it is going before the answers become obvious. If you're interested in the same questions, have a look around.
Dave
Follow my thinking
I write about AI, the agentic economy, blockchain, fintech and what happens when emerging technology collides with the real world.
Subscribe to receive new posts and ideas as I publish them.
I write about AI, the agentic economy, blockchain, fintech and what happens when emerging technology collides with the real world.
Subscribe to receive new posts and ideas as I publish them.
