Welcome.
The internet used to make one promise.
If you knew how to ask, you could find almost anything.
That promise is changing.
The list of links became answers. Answers are becoming actions. Every step between a question and what happens next is getting shorter, and the step that disappears is often the one you were standing on.
At the same time, discovery has become stranger.
People search YouTube instead of Google. They ask ChatGPT instead of typing keywords. They trust a Reddit thread over a polished website. They buy from a recommendation they never searched for in the first place.
Finding something has become less predictable.
Being found has become less visible.
I've spent most of my career trying to understand systems that rarely explain themselves. Search engines were simply the first example. Artificial intelligence is only the latest.
The interesting part was never memorizing the rules.
It was learning how to infer them.
That way of thinking turns out to apply well beyond marketing.
It helps explain why some ideas spread while better ones disappear. Why one business quietly thrives while another with a bigger budget struggles. Why people mistake polished answers for true ones. Why being correct is often less important than being convincing.
Those are the kinds of questions I want to explore here.
This publication is called Finding and Being Found because I think those are two of the oldest human activities. We search for knowledge, work, friendship, belonging, opportunity, meaning. We also hope to be discovered by the people who need what only we can offer.
Technology changes.
Those desires don't.
I'll publish here about once a week.
Some essays will be about AI. Some about search. Some about business. Some will wander into psychology, history, magic, Sherlock Holmes, or whatever else helps illuminate how discovery actually works.
Over time, I suspect these essays will become a short book.
But that's not really the point.
The point is to build the ideas in public.
I'm glad you're here.
Finding + Being Found is a weekly letter about discovery, judgment, and how people and machines decide what deserves attention.
