brian pofahl

We know this situation exists, but not many people are openly talking about it.

Being in a highly competitive entrepreneurial environment is challenging on many levels... not only in terms of sales and business growth, but also legal responsibilities, administration, and often handling most things independently, all while managing family and personal stuff.

Every few years someone declares the spreadsheet dead. Notion was going to kill it, then Airtable, then a hundred AI tools, and now agents are supposedly going to make it obsolete too.

But Excel is 40 years old and still runs most of the actual decisions at most actual companies. I'd bet it outlasts almost everything launching on this site this year, including a lot of stuff I love.

Honest question for this forum.

I save AI tool threads constantly. New model drops, someone's slick Cursor workflow, "10 tools that'll change everything." I open maybe one in twenty. And I still feel behind every single week.

Lately I think the problem isn't information, there's an ocean of it. The problem is that almost all of it tells you about AI instead of showing you. A thread describes a workflow. A launch video is scripted so everything works on the first try. None of it shows the real thing: the prompt someone throws away, the tool they reach for and why, the moment it breaks and how they dig out.

And that's the part that actually teaches you. Nobody got good at cooking from recipes or at chess from the rulebook. You get good watching people better than you do the real work.