If you follow me on (Substack) Notes or LinkedIn you may have seen things picking back up over the last couple of weeks. I’m back properly, and next Monday, the 17th, I’m publishing the piece I’ve been building toward since I started writing again after the long silence.

This is what happened over that period : I started noticing a pattern across a few hundred deals, and instead of just writing about it, I built something to check whether the pattern was real or just me seeing what I wanted to see. That question, more than anything else, is what pulled me back. Together with the strong nudge from my friend in Saudi Arabia, who said I should get back into it.

On Monday you’ll get the full answer... including the parts I’m less comfortable with, and a way to check my work yourself. Excited to share next week.

Talk soon.
Shavaye

Hey Dealmakers,

Before I get into this week’s deal, a quick personal note. I’ve been quiet recently, and that’s mainly because of the challenges in the Middle East at the moment. The Middle East is an amazing place, one I call home. It’s filled with the best people I know, people I call family, friends and colleagues. I have no doubt we’ll all emerge stronger from this.

Okay. Now let me tell you about a deal that completely shifted how I think about what’s coming next.

A robot dog just paid for its own electricity with stablecoins, autonomously. And the two companies that made it happen because they needed the world to believe it could.

That’s a deal-making move I want to break down for you, because the principle behind it is one I’ve used a few times.

Let’s get into it.

🔥 The Dealmakers Spotlight

Circle x OpenMind: How a Robot Dog Paying for Its Own Charging Is Actually a Masterclass in Market Signalling

So here’s the background. Last year, “agentic commerce” was a buzzword. LLMs were getting smarter, everyone was amazed at how much better ChatGPT was getting, but the idea of AI agents actually doing things in the real world, making purchases, managing transactions, operating independently... that still felt like science fiction to most people.

Then 2026 kicked off with a bang. Open Claw took the world by storm. Claude Cowork launched. For those who haven’t tried Open Claw, it’s basically an open source platform that lets you give an AI a laptop and a job description, and it starts learning and doing things for you. I tried it myself, and even without coding experience it blew my mind. You onboard it, input values and preferences, and suddenly you have a new employee getting stuff done while you’re away.

The agentic era arrived faster than anyone predicted. Jack Dorsey announced he’d be laying off roughly 50% of his staff because of it. And then, quietly, Circle and OpenMind announced a partnership that I think is one of the most strategically interesting deals of the year.

The Players

Circle is the company behind USDC (think of it as a digital dollar, backed 1:1 with real USD). But Circle’s ambition is much bigger than just a stablecoin. They want to build the financial infrastructure that lets value move as seamlessly as sending a text message. Today, sending money from one country to another through traditional banking takes days. With stablecoins, it’s basically instant. And if it’s programmable, you can set your own predefined rules, your own ‘contract’, for when and how funds can move.

OpenMind is trying to become the Android of robotics. They’ve built an open-source operating system called OM1 that works across quadrupeds, humanoids, wheeled robots, drones... basically any form factor. The idea is that hardware manufacturers shouldn’t have to build their own software stack from scratch. OpenMind gives them a ready-made brain. They raised $20 million last year from Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Ribbit, and they’re already working with manufacturers like Unitree, Agibot, Deep Robotics, and Fourier. Their robot dog named Bits (yes they called it that), the star of this deal’s demo, runs on OM1 and can learn new skills through what’s essentially an app store for robots. Think about that for a second: a hardware-agnostic operating system that lets any robot download capabilities the way you download apps on your phone. That’s the layer OpenMind controls.

The Deal

Circle and OpenMind partnered to integrate Circle’s payments layer directly into autonomous agents. The result: robots and AI agents can now make payments on behalf of themselves or the people who own them. Circle is calling these “Nanopayments”, USDC transfers as small as $0.000001 with zero gas fees. That last part is the game-changer. They’re essentially telling the world: for the millions of tiny transactions that robots and agents will need to make, this will be free.

The demo? OpenMind’s robot dog, Bits, autonomously paid for its own recharging using USDC. No human touched anything.

Why This Matters For Dealmakers

You might be thinking: okay, a robot dog paid for electricity. Cool demo. Why do I care?

Because this deal isn’t really about a robot dog. It’s about market positioning. When Circle listed last year, most people just thought “stablecoin company.” And the problem with being “just a stablecoin company” is that it’s easy to copy. PayPal launched one, others followed. The competitive moat was eroding.

What Circle did with this OpenMind partnership is reframe their entire story. They went from “we make a digital dollar” to “we’re building the financial system that autonomous machines will run on.” That’s a fundamentally different company. A fundamentally different valuation thesis. And they achieved it not through a product launch, but through a partnership.

The deal itself may not scale in the short run. But it doesn’t need to. It needed to make the market believe.

🧠 The Principle

The “Breakthrough Deal”: Using Partnerships to Make the Impossible Feel Inevitable

I’ve lived this one. In the early days of Uber, the platform started with a simple promise: move people from A to B. But the underlying technology was built to move anything around. People, things, food, using any form factor. The world at that time didn’t really understand this. When we talked to people about the platform being capable of so much more, you could see them nodding politely but not really getting it. The future was too far away from what they could picture.

So we did deals that didn’t scale. On purpose. Breakthrough deals.

One of my favourites was Uber Chopper. It was a stunt, honestly pretty clunky at the time, but it showed people something they couldn’t unsee: you could move people through the air using Uber. The form factor didn’t matter. The tech connected it all. And the best part? I got to do this with one of our hero partners in Tanzania, Tigo Telecom. We had a multifaceted deal with them already, and we used the Chopper stunt as a marketing opportunity on top of it. Did it scale into a product? No. But it showed people you could move people in the air using Uber... even in Tanzania.

Fast forward to today and Uber Air is a legitimate product that will be fully commercialised. That’s what a breakthrough deal does. It doesn’t need to be profitable. It needs to make the future feel inevitable.

I see the exact same playbook in the Circle and OpenMind partnership. Nobody believes robots will manage their own money yet. So they showed a robot dog paying for its own charging. The demo is the argument. Just like our chopper was the argument.

This is what I think of as the “Breakthrough Deal.” A partnership designed not to generate revenue in the short term, but to break through the market’s mental barriers. To take a concept that people think is pie in the sky and prove it’s real enough to bet on.

I’ve seen this pattern play out again and again:

• Apple and iTunes in 2003. The music labels thought digital distribution was piracy in disguise. Apple didn’t try to argue the point. They partnered with the labels to build a legal storefront and made the future feel safe.

• Tesla and Panasonic’s Gigafactory deal. Nobody believed electric vehicles could achieve the battery economics needed for mass adoption. Tesla didn’t just build a factory. They partnered with Panasonic and showed the world the scale was coming.

• Uber Chopper. Nobody believed a ride-hailing app could move people through the air. So we just... did it. In Tanzania & a host of other countries around the world. And now it’s becoming a real product.

• Circle and OpenMind right now. Nobody believes robots will manage their own money. So they showed a robot dog paying for its own charging. Same playbook, different era.

Here’s the principle: when the market doesn’t believe in your future, don’t argue with them. Find a partner, build a proof point, and let reality do the persuading. Analysts rarely believe a new market exists until you show them. So show them.

The deal that changes your company’s story isn’t always the biggest deal. Sometimes it’s the one that makes the impossible feel inevitable.

❓ The Question

Here’s what I’ve been chewing on:

Have you ever done a deal, whether it was a partnership, a pilot, or a proof of concept, where the real goal wasn’t revenue or scale, but changing how the market perceived your company? What happened? Did it work?

Hit reply. I read every single one, and would love to collaborate with you for future editions.

📚 One Thing Worth Reading

“The agentic commerce opportunity: How AI agents are ushering in a new era for consumers and merchants”, McKinsey (2025)

McKinsey is projecting the global agentic commerce market could reach $3–5 trillion by 2030. That’s not a typo. Trillion with a T.

What struck me isn’t the number itself. It’s the infrastructure gap it implies. Right now, the entire payments system is designed for humans. Think about it: you physically check your phone for an authentication code, you use your biometrics for Apple Pay, you click “confirm purchase.” Every step assumes a human is in the loop. If agents and robots are going to transact at the scale McKinsey is projecting, someone needs to rebuild that infrastructure from the ground up. That’s the opportunity Circle is positioning for, and the reason the OpenMind partnership is more strategic than it looks on the surface.

I’d been thinking about this vaguely for months, but this report crystallised it. Worth the read if you’re in BD, partnerships, or commercial strategy anywhere in tech, because the agentic commerce wave is going to create an enormous number of deals over the next five years, and understanding the landscape now gives you a head start.

Shavaye

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This is the second part of the ‘How to read Body Language; series. Check out part 1 if you haven’t yet, where I’ve laid some of the foundations to this post.

You’ve been in that room.

The pitch went well. The energy was good. You shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, walked out thinking “we’ve got this one.” Then the follow-up emails go quiet. The calls don’t get returned. Three weeks later, someone tells you they went with another partner.

And you’re sitting there trying to figure out what happened.

Here’s what I’ve realized since diving into this stuff: the deals I’ve lost weren’t lost because of bad offers. They were lost because I was only paying attention to half the conversation. I was listening to words while the room was screaming at me through posture, hand movements, and micro-expressions I completely missed.

If any of this sounds familiar and if you’ve ever been blindsided by a “no” that came out of nowhere, if you’ve misjudged a room because everyone was nodding politely, if you’ve pushed harder on a point when you should’ve pivoted, then you’re leaving money and relationships on the table every single time you walk into a meeting.

And the uncomfortable truth? The person across from you who does read these signals is adjusting in real time. They’re catching the discomfort you’re missing, softening their approach, addressing the objection before it’s even spoken. They’re not smarter than you. They’re just reading the full conversation.

In Part 1, I shared three foundational principles from Joe Navarro’s What Every Body is Saying which is establishing baselines, watching for comfort vs. discomfort, and looking for clusters. If you haven’t read that, have a look and start there.

This time, I want to go further. I want to show you what this actually looks like in practice. Like the specific signals I’ve started watching for, the ones that have already changed how I negotiate, and the simple protocol I now run in every meeting.

The Negotiation That Should Have Fallen Apart

A few months ago, I was deep in a partnership negotiation. Multi-party, complex terms, the kind of deal that takes weeks to close. On paper, the first session went smoothly. We’d done our homework, the deck was tight, and the initial responses were positive.

But I’d been studying Navarro’s framework obsessively at this point, so instead of just running my usual playbook, I gave myself a job beyond presenting: observe.

The first thing I noticed was during the small talk before we got into the real content. The lead negotiator on the other side was relaxed — leaning back, arms open, feet flat on the ground. That was his baseline. Calm, measured, comfortable.

Then we got into the terms.

When we brought up exclusivity, his torso rotated maybe ten or fifteen degrees away from the table. Subtle. If you weren’t watching, you’d miss it entirely. His words were still “yeah, let’s explore that.” But his body had already registered disagreement. He’d gone from facing us squarely to blading away, this is what Navarro calls “ventral denial.” When we like what we’re hearing, we face people openly. When we don’t, we turn away, sometimes by just a few degrees.

I made a mental note and kept going.

Then pricing came up. This time it was the lips. They tightened. Not dramatically — he didn’t grimace or shake his head. His lips just got thinner. For about two seconds, they practically vanished. Navarro writes about lip compression as one of the most universal stress indicators. The brain is essentially saying “shut it down, something’s wrong here.” And it happens so fast that most people across the table never catch it.

I caught it.

The third signal came on timelines. I proposed an aggressive launch window and his feet, which had been gently bouncing since we started (his normal rhythm), went completely still. A foot freeze. Navarro explains that when someone who’s been moving their legs suddenly stops, the limbic brain has kicked into its most primitive response, which is freeze. Something I said triggered a threat response.

So I had three data points in about twenty minutes. Exclusivity: torso lean away. Pricing: lip compression. Timelines: foot freeze. That’s a cluster. And clusters reveal the full truth.

Here’s what I did differently than I would have a year ago: I didn’t push through. I didn’t add more slides or pile on logic. I paused and got curious.

I said something like, “I want to make sure we’re building something that works for both sides. Before we go further, is the structure we’re proposing sitting right with you, or should we rethink some of these pieces?”

He exhaled. Visibly relaxed. And then he told me the real concerns, which were things he hadn’t planned to bring up until much later, probably over email where it’s easier to say no. The exclusivity terms felt too restrictive for their other partnerships. The pricing model needed a different structure. And the timeline was unrealistic given their existing priorities.

We reworked all three in that same session, which allowed us to close the deal not long after.

If I hadn’t been watching, I’d have walked out of that first meeting thinking everything was great. The “no” would’ve come by email three weeks later, dressed up as “shifting priorities” or “not the right timing.” I’ve seen that movie before. This time, I caught the signals and changed the ending.

The Four Signals I Now Watch For In Every Deal

After experiencing many meetings like I’ve discussed above, I’ve narrowed my focus to four nonverbal signals that come up most consistently in deal-making contexts. These aren’t the only ones that exist(Navarro’s book covers dozens), but these are the ones I’ve found most practical and most frequent in the rooms I’m in.

1. The Torso Lean

The torso carries our vital organs, so the brain is extremely protective of it. When we feel safe and in agreement, we face people squarely and openly, what Navarro calls ventral fronting. When something shifts, even slightly, we blade away.

This is the one I watch first because it’s the earliest signal. Before someone’s face reacts, before their hands move, their torso has already voted. It can be as subtle as a five-degree rotation. In a boardroom, you’ll see people who were leaning slightly forward suddenly pull back to neutral or angle away. They might not even notice they’re doing it.

The deal-making application is straightforward. When you’re presenting terms and you see someone’s torso shift away from you… even slightly, that’s where the real conversation needs to happen. Don’t wait for the verbal objection. It might never come. They’ll just go quiet and you’ll get ghosted.

2. The Foot Freeze (or Happy Feet)

This was the biggest surprise for me in Navarro’s book. The feet are actually the most honest part of the body. We’ve been taught since childhood to manage our faces and to some extent our hands, but nobody thinks about their feet. The limbic brain has been controlling our lower limbs for survival for millions of years and we have almost zero conscious awareness of what they’re doing.

Two things to watch for. First, happy feet which are bouncing, wiggling, energetic movement which signals positive emotions. If you float an idea and their feet start bouncing, they like it. Second, the foot freeze which is sudden stillness in someone who’s been moving. That’s the limbic freeze response kicking in. Something just registered as a threat.

The practical challenge is that you often can’t see feet under a table. But here’s the workaround: if someone’s bouncing their legs, their shoulders and shirt will vibrate slightly. Watch for that micro-movement above the table or on Zoom calls. Even though people are not showing their feet, if it’s moving you, can tell on a video call. And when it suddenly stops, pay attention to what was just said.

3. Hand Confidence Shifts

Hands get disproportionate attention from the brain which is an evolutionary carryover from needing to quickly assess whether someone was holding a weapon or offering food. Two specific hand behaviors have been the most useful for me.

The first is steepling which is, fingertips pressed together, palms apart. This is the highest confidence hand display there is (think of it like making a pyramid with your hand). Lawyers, judges, and executives do it instinctively when they feel sure of their position. The second is the collapse of the steeple into interlaced, wringing fingers. That transition happens in a split second and it tells you the exact moment doubt entered someone’s mind.

Watch the hands during any back-and-forth on terms. If the other party is steepling while they present their counter-offer, they believe in it. If their steeple collapses when you push back, they’re not confident they can hold that position. That’s where you have room to negotiate.

The other thing… and this one’s simple but powerful… keep your own hands visible. Research backs up what Navarro teaches from his FBI experience: when people can’t see your hands, they subconsciously trust you less. Hands under the table, behind the back, or stuffed in pockets create unease. Visible hands, relaxed and open, signal “I have nothing to hide.”

4. Lip Signals

I’ve grouped two distinct mouth behaviors together because they come up constantly and they mean different things.

Lip compression which is when the lips tighten and seem to vanish. This is a stress response. The brain is processing something negative. It’s universal and it’s involuntary. If you see it during a contract review or pricing discussion, the person is troubled by what they just heard.

Lip pursing which is the lips push outward and together, almost like a soft pout (think Instagram model pout) actually means something different. It signals disagreement or that the person is forming an alternative idea. This is actually a more optimistic signal than compression. Pursed lips often mean “I don’t agree with what you’re proposing, but I have a counter in mind.” That’s an opening, not a wall.

In practice, the distinction matters. Lip compression means “stop and address this.” Lip pursing means “stop and ask what they’d propose instead.” Both require you to pause. But the follow-up question is different.

My Meeting Protocol

All of this is useless if you don’t build it into a habit. Here’s the simple protocol I’ve been running for the past few years. It takes no extra time and it’s just a shift in where I put my attention.

Before: I think about who’ll be in the room. If I’ve met them before, I recall their normal energy such as how they sit, where their hands usually rest, their general posture. That’s my baseline reference. If it’s a first meeting, I know the first five minutes are my window to establish one.

First five minutes: I don’t push into substance immediately. I let the room settle and I observe. I’m noting default posture, hand placement, facial tension levels, and overall energy. This is my “normal” snapshot. Everything after this gets measured against it.

During the substance: When we get to the contentious stuff like pricing, terms, exclusivity and timelines, I split my attention. Part of me is presenting. Part of me is scanning. Torso shifts. Hand transitions. Lip signals. Foot freezes. If I see a cluster of two or more discomfort signals at the same moment, I know I’ve hit something real.

The pivot: When I catch a cluster, I don’t push harder. I get curious. Something like “I want to make sure this works for both sides… how does this piece feel to you?” or “I’m sensing some hesitation here. What would work better?” Nine times out of ten, the other person opens up with the real concern. They’re often relieved someone noticed.

After: I debrief with myself, sometimes on the walk to my car. What did I observe? When did the energy shift? What was being discussed at that exact moment? This is where the real intelligence lives. The patterns you notice across multiple meetings start compounding into intuition.

Why This Compounds

Here’s what nobody tells you about this skill. It doesn’t just help you in the meeting where you spot the signal. It changes how you prepare for the next meeting with the same person. You start building a library of how individuals respond to different types of pressure. You learn that one partner always compresses his lips on pricing but never on timelines. You learn that another person’s feet go still whenever legal terms come up. Over time, you’re reading specific people with increasing accuracy.

Navarro spent twenty-five years at the FBI refining this. He caught spies, solved arson cases, and identified murderers using these same principles. We’re not doing that. We’re trying to close partnerships and structure deals. But the underlying science is identical, watch the body, read the discomfort, ask the right question.

The best deal makers I’ve met all have this in common. They watch more than they talk. They notice the shift before it becomes an objection. And they have the discipline to pause and get curious instead of pushing through.

Unlike most competitive advantages, this one gets sharper every time you use it.

If you found this useful, forward it to someone who’d benefit. And I’d genuinely like to hear from you — if you’ve started applying anything from Part 1 or Part 2, reply to this email and tell me what you noticed. Your observations might make it into a future post.

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Over the break, I reflected on the deal making skills that have made me better. What I realized is that these skills transcend partnerships as I use them daily, and they’ve fundamentally changed how I see everything. I rarely speak about this openly because it’s been a secret weapon of mine, something most people haven’t studied as a science.

Studying this has been life changing. As humans, we’re constantly negotiating—whether it’s getting your child to eat, making sure your partner is happy with your holiday choice, or closing a billion-dollar deal.

To do this well, you need information. The more you have, the better your next decision and the closer you get to what you want, whether short term or on the grander chessboard you’re playing on. Non-verbal behavior comprises 60-65% of all interpersonal communication. Most people get this and it’s why we’re back in the office and why important meetings still happen in person.

There’s a lot to cover, so I’m breaking this into parts. This is a summary of Joe Navarro’s book What Every Body is Saying, with my personal reflections. Let’s dive into a recent experience...

The Pitch That Died in Real Time

Last month, I watched a founder pitch his partnership to us. His presentation was tight, numbers were solid. Fifteen minutes in, he’s crushing it... or so he thought.

I saw something he didn’t: Three minutes into his product overview, one of the execs’ lips compressed into a thin line. Gone. Like someone hit the mute button on his face. Then came the self-soothing—hand to neck making his hand into a V-shape rubbing his throat. His eyes started to squint a bit.

The founder kept talking. Missed it completely. I honestly felt bad for the guy and noticed that he was not aware of the room’s reaction. The deal died two weeks later. “Concerns about the product market fit,” they said.

We’ve all had one of those meetings at some point in time, when we say, “It was great, we’re looking forward to the next session.” Suddenly when you follow up via email, no one replies, they don’t return the calls... and you’re struggling to figure out what’s going on.

Here’s the thing: while you’re focused on delivery and honing the pitch deck, your counterpart is screaming their real objections through their body language. And we’re not actually listening to what their body language is saying, how they’ve dressed, or the seating position at the table.

Joe Navarro’s Story: From Cuban Immigrant to FBI Expert

Joe Navarro landed in Miami from Cuba at eight years old, couldn’t speak a word of English, and had to figure out how to survive American elementary school. He did what every immigrant does—he learned to read the room.

He noticed patterns. Kids who liked him? Eyebrows went up when they saw him. Kids who didn’t? Eyes squinted slightly. No words needed.

Fast forward twenty years. Navarro’s an FBI agent investigating a hotel fire in Puerto Rico that killed 97 people. Security guard’s under suspicion. When they asked where he was during the fire, his eyes blocked—squinted, closed, shielded—which was the classic discomfort tell.

But here’s the interesting part: when they asked, “Did you set the fire?” his eyes stayed calm. The wrong question was actually causing the stress.

Turns out, the guard had left his post to hook up with his girlfriend. He wasn’t an arsonist, he was just guilty and terrified about being in the wrong place. They found the real arsonists and convicted all three. Turns out this one observation made the breakthrough.

The lesson? People’s bodies leak the truth even when their mouths don’t.

Three Tells That’ll Change How You Negotiate

Joe Navarro breaks down his framework with the ten commandments. I’ve distilled it to three major aspects I found the most important. The goal here is not to become a human lie detector, but to become a better observer. You need three things that’ll give you an edge in your next high-stakes conversation.

1. Know What Normal Looks Like (Then Watch for the Crack)

You can’t spot deviations if you don’t know the baseline.

Before you dive into the hard stuff like pricing, terms, and deal-breakers, just spend five minutes observing. How do they sit? Where do their hands rest? What’s their normal face look like?

A British shipping company hired Navarro to sit in on contract negotiations worth tens of millions. He told them: “Present the contract point by point. I’ll watch their negotiator and pass you notes.”

Didn’t take long. When they read the clause about outfitting a specific part of the vessel, the corporate negotiator’s lips pursed. Tight and disapproving.

Navarro passed a note: “Something’s wrong with this clause. Don’t move on.”

They dug in. Hashed it out face-to-face. Saved $13.5 million because someone noticed a lip movement.

Your move: In your next meeting, before the real conversation starts, just watch. Note their baseline. Relaxed shoulders? Open posture? Casual hand placement? When you get to the contentious stuff, you’ll know exactly when things shift.

2. Look for Comfort vs. Discomfort (That’s It)

When you’re drowning in details, use the simplest filter: Is this person comfortable or uncomfortable right now?

Comfortable looks like: leaning in, open gestures, steady breathing, genuine smiles (eyes crinkle), relaxed shoulders.

Uncomfortable looks like: touching their neck, compressed lips, shifting away, crossed arms that suddenly appear, ventilating (pulling collar, adjusting tie), face touching.

You don’t need a PhD in psychology. All you need is to notice when someone goes from comfortable to uncomfortable—and what you just said that caused it.

Navarro was working in his dad’s hardware store when he noticed a guy standing by the register. Not in line. Not buying anything. Just... standing. Eyes locked on the cash drawer.

Then his nostrils flared. Hard.

That’s called nasal wing dilation—it’s your body oxygenating before action. Navarro had maybe one second.

He yelled, “Watch out!” The guy lunged for the open drawer. His dad grabbed the guy’s hand, twisted it, cash dropped, and the robber ran.

In negotiations: When you mention price and suddenly your counterpart is touching their neck and leaning back? They’re uncomfortable. Don’t bulldoze through. That’s where the real conversation needs to happen.

3. Watch for Clusters, Not Singles (Multiple Tells = Real Signal)

One signal might be random. Three signals at once? That’s going to give you real insight as it affirms the emotion or state that person might be in.

You’re in a partnership discussion. You float the idea of a 60/40 equity split. You see:

• Lip compression (disapproval)

• Hand to neck (self-soothing)

• Lean back (creating distance)

• Eyes briefly close (blocking the unpleasant)

That’s not “maybe uncomfortable.” That’s “absolutely not happening.” The above is listed as a cluster of behaviors noticed, which will give you the edge.

But here’s where most people mess up in this situation... they keep talking. They try to convince. They add more logic to their argument.

Stop.

You just got handed the roadmap to the real issue. The body language is telling you: “This is the thing. Right here. This is what we need to solve.”

Your version: When you see a cluster of discomfort signals, don’t push harder. Get curious. “I’m sensing some hesitation about this structure. What would work better for you?”

The One-Week Challenge

Here’s a fun exercise for the next week to put this into practice. It’s just about building the muscle. Fortunately, this is a skill that can be developed—the more you use it, the better it becomes.

Pick one person you’re meeting with this week. Could be a negotiation, a pitch, a partnership conversation, a team meeting. Doesn’t matter.

Before the hard stuff starts, establish their baseline. Where do their hands rest? What’s their neutral face? How do they sit when relaxed?

During the conversation, watch for one thing: When do they shift from comfortable to uncomfortable?

Don’t try to spot every tell. Don’t overanalyze. Just watch for the shift. Then ask yourself: what did I just say that caused that?

Just focus on one observation.

The truth most people won’t admit: we’re terrible observers. We’re so focused on our next point, our clever rebuttal, our perfect close, that we miss the person across from us basically screaming their real concerns through their body.

The $13.5 million save happened because someone was watching a lip movement while everyone else was reading the contract.

The arson case broke because someone noticed eye-blocking behavior while others were listening to words.

Your next deal might hinge on whether you notice the hand going to the neck when you mention timelines, or the slight lean back when you talk about exclusivity.

If you’re interested in diving deeper, in my next post I’ll be dissecting the different elements of body language that Joe Navarro discusses in his book. Stay tuned.

Welcome to my biweekly newsletter covering a range of topics within the deal making space. Join a bunch of curious folks here.

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In my early career, I judged most of my decisions by their results. When things went well, I thought it was all me, and when things went poorly, I felt I messed up. I started to lose confidence, avoid risk, and repeat a bunch of mistakes. This made me lose momentum, as I second-guessed a lot of deals and hesitated out of fear of being wrong, which made me miss potential opportunities.

This is exactly what Annie Duke talks about in Thinking in Bets, a book I recently read and reflected deeply on in terms of how I could apply the principles. Honestly, her entire framework maps perfectly onto partnerships, negotiations, and long-cycle commercial plays because most people in deals behave like they’re trying to win arguments, not increase expected value.

Let me explain.

The Illusion of “I Know This Will Work”

In corporate environments, everyone loves certainty.

The clean narrative. The big confident prediction.

The tight deck that somehow confirms what we want through an intricate, polished presentation citing facts and models that make it work in theory.

But that’s not how real deals work. A partnership is a probabilistic game. You never have full information.

You never control all the variables. You never actually know how the other side will behave once contracts are signed and the initial enthusiasm fades.

Yet people still go in trying to convince themselves (and their boss) that “this is the one.” This becomes emotional comfort, not actual strategy.

Thinking in Bets teaches that certainty is an illusion. Good decisions are not the ones that feel certain they’re the ones where the expected value is positive, even if the outcomes fluctuate.

What’s expected value? Here’s a super simple example:

Imagine someone offers you this deal:

• 50% chance to win $10

• 50% chance to win $0

EV = (0.5 × 10) + (0.5 × 0) = $5

This doesn’t mean you’ll get $5.

It means:

“If you played this game 100 times, you’d average $5 per play.”

The expected value is $5, even though you never actually win $5 in any single round.

The great part about thinking this way is that you stop fixating on the final result as a fixed number. This was a huge breakthrough for me personally. Previously, when I forecasted or evaluated a deal, I felt like if I didn’t hit the number or the deal didn’t perform, that meant failure. But actually, as long as the thinking process was right and the expected value was higher than the alternatives, it made sense to do the deal.

If the deal ultimately doesn’t perform, that’s part of the probability game.

The key is to focus on the process, not the result.

Then rinse and repeat.

Most People Judge Decisions by Outcomes

Partner launched late? Blame the partner.

Revenue lower than forecast? Blame the model.

This is “resulting,” the exact trap Annie Duke warns about when evaluating the quality of a decision purely by its outcome.

And yes, you’re probably thinking: Shavaye, this sounds like a very elegant way of not blaming yourself when sh*t hits the fan :-)*

There will always be situations where someone genuinely dropped the ball, and I’m completely aligned with holding people accountable.

But then there’s the inverse:

“This deal was great! You’re a genius.”

“Results were through the roof!”

“The partner crushed it!”

“The team worked around the clock!”

Yet we rarely stop to ask:

How much of that was skill vs luck?

We tend to think we succeed because of skill and fail because of luck. But both outcomes are always a blend of the two.

You might make the right decision with the right data… and still land a mediocre result.

Or make the wrong decision with the wrong data… and somehow look brilliant.

What matters is the process and understanding that each deal is a bet.

Focus on making the right decisions.

Rinse and repeat.

Why Are We So Attached to the Result?

From the time we’re kids, we’re trained to think in right or wrong, A or F, correct or incorrect. School conditions us to believe every question has a single answer and every action has a clear outcome. You either “got it right” or “got it wrong.”

But in real life, there’s always missing information. When we make a choice, it’s based on what we know right now. The answer may change as more information reveals itself.

Now that I think about it, we should definitely bring statistics into the school curriculum much earlier and start teaching kids this… instead of us, as adults, trying to un-school ourselves. (Anyway, that’s a deeper topic for another post.)

Back to Annie Duke…

Her whole point is that binary thinking makes us terrible decision-makers. We grow up believing that a good outcome means a good decision, and a bad outcome means the opposite.

That’s the trap she calls resulting.

3 Simple Techniques To Help You Make Better Bets

So what can we do daily to shift our thinking? Here are three simple techniques I find useful:

1. Replace “Was I right?” with “Was that a good bet?”

After every decision, win or lose, ask:

• Given what I knew at the time, was this the highest-EV option?

• Did I rely on data, or did I rely on hope?

This shifts attention from results to decision quality which is the core of Annie Duke’s work.

Why it works:

It breaks the childhood conditioning of “right/wrong” and trains the brain to evaluate decisions the way a professional investor or poker player does.

2. Do a Pre-Mortem Before Big Decisions

Instead of asking, “Why will this work?” ask:

“Imagine this deal failed spectacularly six months from now. What likely caused it?”

List the reasons. Then mitigate them before signing anything.

Why it works:

It puts your brain into probabilistic mode, not optimistic mode.

3. Separate Outcome Review and Decision Review

After any deal, run two separate reviews:

Decision Review (before the outcome biases you):

• What did we know?

• What options did we compare?

• Why did we choose this one?

• What were the known risks?

Outcome Review (after results emerge):

• How much was skill?

• How much was luck?

• What would we change next time?

Why it works:

It prevents “resulting” - blaming yourself for bad luck or taking credit for good luck.

Final Thoughts

Thinking in Bets gave me permission to stop beating myself up for every deal that didn’t land the way I wanted. It forced me to separate my identity from the outcome. Once I did that, I started making cleaner decisions, taking smarter risks, and moving faster because I wasn’t stuck replaying every miss like it was some moral failure.

Deals are messy. People are unpredictable. Markets shift. Partners change their minds.

But if you build a process that consistently puts you in high-EV situations, you win over time. Not every deal, but over time.

That’s the real game.

Not being right.

Not calling every shot perfectly.

Just making better bets, repeatedly, with less emotion and more clarity.

If there’s one thing you take away from this:

Judge yourself by your process, not a single outcome.

That mindset doesn’t just make you a better dealmaker, it makes you harder to shake, harder to distract, and a lot more effective in the long run.

Because once you stop needing every bet to work…

you finally start placing the ones that actually matter.

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Most partnerships don’t fail because the strategy is bad. They fail because people treat partners like employees, try to use internal tactics externally, and then wonder why nothing moves. This is the core mistake most dealmakers make.

Internal Pressure vs External Reality

Everyone in business loves talking about “the stick and the carrot.”

Internally, the stick works because you control livelihoods. If you say, “Get this done or your performance review takes a hit,” people move. Fear is a functional (but crude) tool.

But with a partner? Completely different game.

Your deal is incremental to their business. If it dies, they still have revenue tomorrow. They don’t starve (yes, I’m being dramatic, but you get the point). They just move on. And this is why most people mismanage partnerships because they expect internal dynamics to work externally, and they never do.

Understanding that difference sets the stage for everything that follows.

The Honeymoon vs. The Messy Middle

The start of every partnership is magic: dinners, great photos, executives shaking hands like they’ve reinvented the industry, and high-fives before any real work happens.

It’s the infatuation stage. The easiest part. Everyone falls in love with the idea.

Then month three arrives. Now the rubber hits the road and there are teething issues, misalignment, overestimations, slow execution and more.

Suddenly the euphoria is gone and the mood shifts. A dashboard dips by 3% and people want to throw the entire deal in the bin. Escalate. Blame. Panic. Repeat.

This is the moment most partnerships die not because they can’t work, but because you’ve hit the messy middle and it’s extremely difficult to manage it.

Before you escalate, you have to understand what’s actually happening.

The First Rule of Partner Management

Before you rush to escalate, you need to get under the hood and understand what’s actually going on.

Is the partner struggling because of an actual capability gap?

A timing issue due to internal projects?

A resource constraint because they don’t have enough people?

Or is the friction coming from your own team — miscommunication, unrealistic expectations, or processes that slow everything down?

Sometimes the issue isn’t people at all, but a fundamental misalignment in how the two organisations operate.

Inside your own company, you can bang the table and force action because you control the levers. But outside? You don’t own their roadmap, their priorities, or their bandwidth and trying to manage them the same way is a guaranteed path to friction, not progress.

This is where most people reach for “leverage”… and often use it wrong.

The Most Misunderstood Tool in BD : Leverage

Most people think leverage is a threat. A bomb you keep hidden until the partner “steps out of line.” In theory it feels powerful. In reality it destroys trust and collapses momentum.

True leverage, which is the leverage that moves a partner who doesn’t report to you, is positive leverage. Instead of fear, providing meaning. Instead of pressure, you remind them of the upside.

And this isn’t philosophical. It’s rooted in actual psychology.

Why Positive Leverage Works (The SDT Link)

This is all rooted in science and specifically from Self Determination Theory (SDT), from Deci and Ryan, breaks human motivation into three needs:

• Autonomy - “I have control.”

• Competence - “I’m capable.”

• Relatedness - “I’m connected.”

Every partnership issue mirrors these three needs. Positive leverage works because it strengthens them:

• Give clearer choices → autonomy

• Give resources/templates/tools → competence

• Bring them in early, elevate their internal story → relatedness/status

When you hit these needs, people move not because they have to, but because they want to.

And that’s the only kind of leverage that works externally.

How Positive Leverage Works in Practice?

Start with their motivation as always. Before you move into timelines, deliverables, or pressure tactics, you need to understand the internal story that drove them to sign the deal in the first place.

Why did they agree to this partnership? What’s the real win for them, not just on paper but inside their organisation’s political economy? How does success get measured on their side, and who actually gets the glory if this lands? When you map that out, your negotiation becomes finely tuned.

You uncover the incentives, the personal stakes, and the internal champions who will push this forward when things slow down. That clarity becomes your power source which is the leverage that keeps the deal alive and aligned when everything else gets messy.

I’ve personally tested these phrases on the same deal at different points and the results were night and day. First, I used a direct, fear-based statement:

“We’re taking forever. My team is pressuring me. If you don’t fix this, we will have to escalate.”

It was fear, and fear collapses partnerships. The response? Minimal. Just a half-hearted, “Yes, we’ll get to it,” said to avoid escalation.

Later, faced with the same situation, I reframed it using positive leverage:

“If we don’t accelerate this now, your competitors will get ahead. We lose first-mover advantage in a space both our CEOs want us to lead. This is our moment so let’s move fast.”

Same message, totally different impact. The response:

“You’re right, we can’t let the competition beat us. We have to close this so we secure a first-mover advantage.”

By framing it through their world, not mine, I gave them clarity, meaning, urgency, upside, and the losses they risk. This aligned perfectly with SDT:

• Competence: I can win here.

• Autonomy: I choose to act.

• Relatedness: This matters to people who matter to me.

When you activate all three, you’re not managing a task, you’re mobilising a person.

The Dealmakers Takeaway

A partnership doesn’t fail because it gets messy after a few months. It sometimes fails because people treat partners like an employee and use fear instead of leverage. I do understand sometimes it’s called for and it’s important to use those tactics (which do work in the short run).

I guess what I’m encouraging you to do is think longer term, because once you use positive leverage, it creates compounding value as you harness an individual’s need to express themselves.

The deal makers who win over the long term do the following really well:

1. They understand before they escalate.

2. They use positive leverage, not threats.

3. They manage meaning, not tasks.

This is ultimately how you lead people who don’t work for you and scale deals past the honeymoon phase. Once you master this, you’ll see your deal value compound exponentially.

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The bigger the deal, the bigger the money, the bigger the people and the bigger the egos.

At some point in your career, you realize that most of what you do isn’t really about strategy or numbers. It’s about managing politics. Managing people. Managing egos, including your own.

Every king and queen has their own view of the world and their own castle. Sometimes it’s a physical one, sometimes it’s a mental one which is the version of reality they’ve built and decided to live in. Most of my days are spent standing somewhere in the middle of these castles, trying to keep the ship steady so no one falls into the freezing ocean. That’s the life of business development. And I won’t lie, it’s tough. Especially when you’ve got your own ego to balance while trying to calm everyone else’s.

The word balance is the key here. Freud talked about it more than a century ago and referred to the ego as balancing the id (your instincts and impulses) and the superego (your morals and conscience). It’s the inner referee that keeps the game in play.

You can feel it at work when a coworker drops their responsibility on you an hour before a deadline and walks off for coffee. Your first instinct is to snap (that’s the id). Another voice tells you to just do it quietly (that’s the superego). And somewhere in the middle, your ego steps in, reminding you to stay composed, manage the frustration, and address it calmly later. That’s the ego doing its job: keeping chaos from running the show.

Where the Ego Begins

I never truly understood the origin of the ego until my daughter was born.

Like most new parents, my wife and I read everything we could about parenting from science, philosophy, spirituality. Everyone warned us about the “terrible twos,” and I remember thinking, what’s so terrible about it? Until it arrived.

Suddenly, our sweet baby started saying no. Loudly. Repeatedly. She wanted what she wanted and nothing else. At first, it was frustrating and then I realized what was really happening. That was the moment she was forming her sense of I. Her ego.

The tantrums weren’t rebellion — they were selfhood. The human spirit, in its earliest form, learning to declare itself to the world. Once we saw it that way, everything changed. The “terrible twos” weren’t terrible anymore; they were beautiful. The start of individuality.

We also learned that how you respond in that stage matters. Discipline too harsh, and you suppress that sense of self. Too lenient, and you build a fragile ego that can’t handle resistance later in life. Balance it — and you help them grow into someone who knows who they are, but also knows how to coexist with others.

From Toddlers to Boardrooms

That early ego doesn’t disappear. It just grows up, puts on a title, and starts attending deal reviews.

In every partnership, every negotiation, you’re dealing with versions of that same force, people asserting I. The challenge isn’t getting rid of ego; it’s managing its collisions. Everyone has their own vision, their own story about how the world should look. Every deal is just a stage where those stories meet and test each other.

When I’m deep in a deal, I always remind myself:

my vision of the deal, the thing I believe in so strongly, is also a product of my ego. It’s what pushes me forward, what fuels my conviction. But it also means it will be tested. The moment my idea collides with others, their egos show up too, each shaped by its own history, incentives, and fears.

So I prepare for that. I expect to be thrown off course. Every day.

And over time, I’ve found a few ways to navigate it that have saved me more times than I can count.

How to Manage Off-Balance Egos

1. Mirror, then redirect.

When someone’s ego flares up, don’t fight it head-on. Mirror the emotion for a second by saying something like, “I get why that would be frustrating” and then redirect it toward progress: “Which is why we should lock this down today.” You acknowledge the person without feeding the fire.

2. Separate identity from idea.

Don’t make disagreements personal. Frame it as joint problem-solving: “We’re both seeing different sides of the same issue.” It moves the focus back to the problem, not the person.

3. Let them write part of the story.

Everyone wants narrative control. When you’re close to alignment, let them describe how the deal benefits them. Ask, “How would you present this to your board?” It helps them own the win. Their ego gets fed, but the deal stays intact.

Managing egos isn’t about trying to manipulate people, it’s about understanding what drives people, including yourself.

In the end, deals fall apart not because of bad math or weak strategy, but because someone’s castle got shaken.

At the heart of every deal are just people that are each carrying a small kingdom inside them, each guarding their flag. The trick isn’t conquering those kingdoms; it’s learning to let them stand side by side.

All you have to do is balance the egos, and the deal takes care of itself. Balance your own, and you just might find peace in the chaos.

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Every generation builds something that changes how humanity works.

In the 1800s, it was the railroads, a network that connected cities, markets, and people. In the 1900s, it was the power grid, a web of electricity that lit our nights and powered our industry. In the 2000s, we built the internet, turning information into oxygen for the digital age.

Now, we are building something even larger. The biggest infrastructure buildout in human history. This time, it’s about intelligence.

The Global Effort Behind OpenAI’s Infrastructure Buildout

OpenAI’s rise has triggered a global chain reaction. Behind ChatGPT’s friendly interface lies an ecosystem that spans continents. Power plants, chip factories, cooling systems, transmission lines, and data centers are emerging in deserts, fjords, and cornfields.

, , BlackRock, and Elon Musk’s xAI recently joined forces to acquire Aligned Data Centers for forty billion dollars. It is the largest data center deal in history and marks the first major move in their AI Infrastructure Partnership to build the physical backbone of the AI age.

OpenAI and signed a multi-year agreement to deploy six gigawatts of GPUs, one of the largest compute expansions ever announced. That deal cements AMD as a core partner powering OpenAI’s next generation of models.

Energy companies are securing long-term power contracts measured in hundreds of gigawatts. Governments are reshaping industrial policy around this new energy race. Japan is investing through sovereign AI funds, the United States is pushing forward with the CHIPS Act, and the Gulf states are establishing state-backed compute hubs.

It feels like an industrial revolution disguised as software.

Why So Many Deals, and Why Measured in Gigawatts?

When people hear about OpenAI’s partnerships with power providers or data center operators, they often wonder why so many. Why are tech companies suddenly talking in gigawatts instead of users or lines of code?

Because compute has become the new currency of intelligence.

You can’t measure this ecosystem by counting chips anymore. The number of GPUs alone doesn’t define capability. The efficiency of the chips, the layout of the systems, and the conversion of energy into compute all matter more. Sam Altman often frames it as a race for “the most intelligence per watt.”

Think back to the railroads. At first, people believed that more track meant more value. But not every mile of track carried the same weight. A mile connecting two industrial hubs could power an economy, while another mile through empty land might see only a few trains a week. It cost the same to build but added far less value.

What defined the success of a railroad was not how many miles it spanned, but how efficiently goods moved across the system. The speed, the connections, and the flow of energy determined its true worth.

Now replace railroads with the infrastructure of AI.

The GPUs are the tracks, the streams of data are the trains, and the goods are the intelligence being processed.

Having more GPUs doesn’t automatically make the system better. What matters is how well they are connected, how efficiently they move data, and how much intelligence per watt the entire network produces.

The watt has become the unifying metric that captures the full chain of intelligence, from the power plant to your ChatGPT query.

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Why We Need All This Power

Skeptics call it another bubble. They compare it to the dotcom boom or the crypto craze. But that misses something deeper.

Anyone who has used AI seriously, not casually, but as part of their daily work, knows how much potential still lies dormant. I’ve often felt frustrated when ChatGPT or Gemini completely misunderstood what I was trying to say or created images that missed the point. They are smart, but not yet intuitive. They still fail to connect ideas the way we do naturally.

The vision inside OpenAI and its peers is that every person will have a hyper-personalized AI that acts as an extension of their creativity, intuition, and workflow. But this requires massive compute power, which translates directly into data centers and energy.

This isn’t inefficiency. It’s the cost of simulating intelligence at a personal level for billions of people. We are not building machines to replace us. We are building machines that amplify us, just as previous revolutions did with steam, electricity, and silicon.

Infinite Creativity Meets Infinite Compute

Everyone has asked themselves whether AI will replace them. Replace their job. Replace their purpose.

I asked the same questions until I came across a Substack essay titled How to Be an Artist in the Age of AI by Utsav Mamoria. One line stayed with me:

AI will not make art that surpasses human-made art for one important reason.

Intentionality.

Human creativity is infinite, and that is why we will use all this power. AI will not replace imagination. It will expand it. Any idea can now be brought to life without the barriers that once required years of training or specialized skills. It will help us build, design, write, and experiment at the pace of thought.

Each person carries a unique dataset which is a lifetime of memories, struggles, triumphs, and cultural context that no machine can replicate. In that sense, our DNA holds petabytes of lived experience. AI can collaborate with it, surfacing ideas buried deep in that data and turning them into something new. The future is the merging of infinite compute with infinite creativity.

The New Railroads of Intelligence

When you read about OpenAI signing energy deals or Microsoft announcing another ten billion dollar data center, remember this is not just about chips. It is about civilization laying the new rails of intelligence.

We are building invisible infrastructure that will one day feel as ordinary as power lines or fiber optic cables. And perhaps in the near future, when your personal AI helps you create something extraordinary like a story, a design, a discovery… we will look back and realize this was never just about machines learning to think. It was about humanity expanding its true potential.

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Hi everyone, welcome to a new section of the Deal Maker’s Digest. You may have seen a few of my posts, which are focused on how to become a better deal maker and leader overall. I’m an avid follower of business and technology in general, and I thought I’d look at some of the big partnerships I come across and discuss what I think their strategy is behind the deal. The first one is and . I hope you find this as useful as I do. Let’s dive in!

The Setup

Two weeks ago, Nvidia announced it would invest $5 billion in Intel to build the next generation of computing power together. When I first read that and saw how the stock price climbed, my reaction was, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” At first glance, it felt odd, but then I thought this could be a genius move. Nvidia is the golden child of the AI era, while Intel has spent the last decade stumbling through missed bets. Intel had fallen so hard from its all-time glory that I’m not sure anyone thought it could get back up. Of course, President Trump saw this as an opportunity to swoop in like the ultimate swing trader and scoop up a 10% stake in Intel, and the Nvidia deal went through soon after. What’s really going on here? Let’s dive in.

Intel: From “Intel Inside” to Catching Up

If you grew up with a computer in the ‘90s or 2000s, chances are it had a sticker that read Intel Inside. Intel was the beating heart of the PC revolution, powering Microsoft, Dell, and HP. You knew that if you had an Intel-based computer, your games would be running at their optimum. At least that’s what I wanted an Intel-based PC for: Playing Need for Speed II.

Then the world shifted. Intel missed the mobile boom, losing Apple as a partner. It lagged in manufacturing while rivals like TSMC surged ahead. When Apple shifted to its own silicon, I thought it would be a disaster as you had this massive compatibility issue with various apps. But when I looked at the benchmarks of the M1 chip—the latest Apple chip—I decided to buy one and have never looked back. I guess this is also because Apple has a great ecosystem and can optimize for performance so that you’re always getting the best out of your hardware.

And when AI took off, Intel wasn’t leading, it was scrambling to catch up. They’re definitely kicking themselves knowing that they had an opportunity to invest in OpenAI in 2018, when then CEO Bob Swan thought AI would not turn out to be something worth betting on.

Much later on after this miss, they tried buying startups, launching new processors, betting on data centers. But none of it dented Nvidia’s dominance. Intel still had its name, its scale, and its engineers. What it didn’t have was momentum.

Nvidia: From Gaming to Global Power

Nvidia’s story is the opposite. It started making chips for video games. Then researchers realized those same chips were perfect for AI. Nvidia doubled down and built the software, tools, and systems that made its hardware the default choice for training AI models.

Fast forward, and Nvidia has become the beating heart of the AI economy, the supplier everyone depends on. Which makes its next move even more surprising: why team up with a company it once outpaced?

Big Tech like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta are all designing their own AI chips. AMD, the other U.S. chipmaker, has been gaining ground by offering both processors and graphics chips, positioning itself as a full-stack alternative.

So when the market leader in AI and the lagging legacy player come together, it signals something deeper than a simple investment.

Why These Two Need Each Other

I’ll skip the jargon and explain this the way dealmakers think about it, so I’m going to try and break it down in the simplest way I can. AI requires coordination rather than outright speed. Think of Nvidia’s chips as race cars. They’re fast, but without the right roads and traffic systems, they get stuck. Intel makes the roads, the central processors that organize, direct, and feed data. Nvidia is just starting to make the roads; it has a range of new CPUs about to be released, and no doubt it will be successful integrating these into its architecture.

By pairing up, they can design systems where the “cars” and the “roads” are built to work seamlessly together. Intel is still pretty strong in the PC market with ~$30 billion in revenue, while Nvidia’s PC revenue is just above a third of that with ~$11 billion.

For Nvidia, it’s a form of insurance and expansion. It ensures that it expands deeper into the PC market, where end users like you and I live, and makes sure it uses Intel as the conduit to get there.

For Intel, it’s resurrection. Even if it never catches up in AI chips, being Nvidia’s chosen partner puts it back in the strategic conversation and keeps its core business alive, while giving it a potential strategic lever into the booming data center market.

AMD: The Rival in the Wings

Then there’s AMD. Unlike Nvidia, it builds both types of chips, the brains (CPUs) and the muscle (GPUs). It’s been climbing in market share with products that often match Intel on performance at a lower price. Its new AI chips are said to be closing the gap with Nvidia’s latest.

But AMD faces two challenges: it doesn’t have the deep software ecosystem Nvidia has built, and it relies on outside factories (like TSMC) for production, which brings risks in a volatile geopolitical climate.

Still, if any company can rival this new Nvidia-Intel alliance, it’s AMD.

The U.S. Strategy: Building an AI Moat

There’s also a bigger political game at play here. The U.S. government, under President Trump, recently took a 10% stake in Intel. This is a super interesting deal, because Intel had already been promised a large sum of money under the CHIPS and Science Act; however, instead of just providing grants and subsidies, the administration took equity.

By backing Intel, Washington is trying to build an “AI moat” making sure America controls its own chip supply and isn’t dependent on foreign factories.

That adds weight to Nvidia’s decision. Partnering with Intel isn’t just about technology. It’s about aligning with the company the U.S. government has anointed as strategically essential.

The Deal Lesson

I am an absolute fan of the strategy here; it’s like watching a real-time movie play out, linking the political, technological, and future-facing angles.

Nvidia doesn’t need Intel’s brand. But it needs what only Intel can provide: deep access into the PC market.

Intel doesn’t need Nvidia’s money, but it needs Nvidia’s shine to matter again and create a strategic competitive edge to defend against its competitors.

And both know that with Washington watching, alignment creates protection within the political landscape.

This deal reminds me that in any negotiation, the real advantage isn’t speed or dominance, it’s alignment. Nvidia and Intel are building a moat not just of chips, but of influence.

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Everyone tells you to start with why. Simon Sinek built a movement on it, and for good reason as clarity of purpose inspires.

But in deal making, I’ve learned a different truth: the why doesn’t unlock the deal. The who does.

You can have the best idea, the smartest strategy, even perfect timing. But if you’re across the table from the wrong person, you’re already set up for failure.

The Wrong Person Kills Good Deals

I’ve worked with the wrong people inside the right companies. And it rarely works out.

Why? Because they didn’t have the influence, vision & motivation to get things done.

In business development, motivation and alignment matter. If the person you’re working with can’t mobilize resources, shift priorities, or win over decision makers, then even the sharpest “why” won’t survive contact with reality.

The CEO’s First Question

One of my earliest lessons came when I was leading a major negotiation. We were on our way to meet the CEO of a global company to shape the future of our partnership.

I had spent hours crafting my brief, building it around the “why.” I re-watched Simon Sinek, polished every line, and rehearsed until I was sure I’d nailed it. By the time we stepped into that car, I was confident I could knock it out of the park.

Big mistake.

Before we even arrived, the CEO turned to me and asked:

“Who are we meeting?”

Not why. Not what. Not how. Who.

And he didn’t mean the person’s job title. He wanted to know who they really were. Their influence. Their motivations. Their priorities as a human being.

In his mind, the who unlocked everything. Because once you’re in front of the right person, someone with authority, vision, and skin in the game then the why can shift, evolve, and grow into something bigger than you imagined. The real opportunity comes from the connection.

Coming back to the story… luckily, I had prepared for the who and was able to quickly adjust my flow to start with that, and only then shifting to the why. It was a close call, and a lesson I never forgot.

Every Deal Is a Startup — Find Your Cofounder

Think of it this way: every major deal you strike is like launching a new company.

When you build a startup, the most important decision isn’t the product, the pitch, or even the business model. It’s the cofounder. The person you choose to build with will make or break the venture. History proves this with people like Jobs and Wozniak, Page and Brin, Hastings and Randolph. The why came later. The who came first.

A partnership works the same way. The person across the table isn’t just a counterpart; they’re your cofounder in a business that lives between your two companies. Together, you’re creating something entirely new such as a joint venture, a product, a distribution engine.

And for it to succeed, they need to be as committed as you are. They need to breathe it, feel it, and be willing to do whatever it takes to make the idea real.

Pick the wrong cofounder, and the deal will stall no matter how strong the why. Pick the right one, and you’ll unlock opportunities far bigger than the ones you imagined when you first walked into the room.

Why Human Connection Multiplies Value

Harvard Business Review found that when counterparts build rapport before diving into terms, they consistently reach agreements that create mutual value, this is proof that connection isn’t small talk, it’s strategy (HBR, 2025).

Inside companies, the same holds true. Paul Zak’s research at Claremont Graduate University showed that high-trust workplaces boost productivity by 50% and increase employee energy by more than 100% (HBR, 2017). If that’s what trust can do internally, imagine the compounding effect when two organizations build it together.

Even in venture capital, Stanford research shows that when founders and investors align personally not just strategically and those companies are far more likely to scale successfully (Stanford eCorner, 2024).

The pattern is undeniable: relationships don’t just add value, they multiply it.

The Human Advantage in an AI World

In an age where AI can generate pitches, models, and business strategies, it’s tempting to think the why or the what is enough. But deals are still made by people.

One genuine connection can flip the entire reason you walked into the room and open a door 10x bigger than the one you planned for.

The who always beats the why.

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We tend to think negotiations are won by the bigger player such as the side with more money, more resources, more leverage. It’s often the first thing we think about and the moment we ‘feel’ smaller, we’ve already put ourselves on the back foot. But history proves otherwise.

Take Apple in 2001. Far from today’s trillion-dollar titan, Apple was a scrappy computer company with under 5% market share and a market cap of less than $10 billion. Just a few years earlier, it had been flirting with bankruptcy. Next to the music industry giants like Universal, Warner, Sony, EMI where Apple looked like David facing not one Goliath, but four.

And yet, Steve Jobs walked into their offices and convinced them to flip their business model upside down. How did he do it? Let’s dive in.

The Setup: Giants in Trouble

The music industry was bleeding. With players like Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, piracy was draining billions. I’m sure many of you remember the days of dial-up internet where adding a song to LimeWire and waiting 30 minutes just to be the first with the latest track. The world had suddenly shifted from saving up to buy the latest CD, to downloading a song in 30 minutes and then burning your own disc. This meant CD sales were in free fall. Labels had the content, but they had no control over digital distribution.

Jobs spotted the opening. He offered them a way forward:

• 99 cents a song — simple, legal, and irresistible to consumers.

• iTunes + iPod integration — a seamless system no one else had.

• Mass adoption — a path to profit, not piracy.

The labels hated it. They wanted variable pricing, bundled albums, and full control. Apple was asking them to give up decades of precedent and trust a small computer company to lead them into the future.

Jobs pressed harder: “You have nothing to lose. Piracy is already killing you. This is your chance to make digital work.”

The Power Flip

On paper, Apple wasn’t stronger. But Jobs understood something crucial: power isn’t just about size, it’s about leverage.

Here’s how he rebalanced the table:

• He created urgency. Piracy had destroyed the labels’ bargaining strength. Apple became the lifeline.

• He kept it simple. Consumers didn’t want 12-step downloads or complicated pricing. They wanted one click. Jobs insisted on a model the labels couldn’t deliver alone.

• He positioned Apple as the trusted bridge. Not another exploiter, but the neutral distributor who could restore order. This I think was the ultimate stroke of genius.

By 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Store with major label backing. Within a year, 70 million songs had been sold. By 2008, iTunes wasn’t just a store, it was the largest music retailer in the US. .

David hadn’t toppled Goliath. He’d made Goliath need him.

Lessons for Today’s Underdogs

The Apple story isn’t just history. It’s a playbook for anyone who feels outmatched in a negotiation:

1. Find the pain point. Giants have vulnerabilities. For the music industry, it was piracy. What’s theirs?

2. Bring what they can’t. Apple offered integration and consumer trust the labels couldn’t build. What’s your unique edge?

3. Reframe the deal. Jobs didn’t pitch iTunes as a nice-to-have. He framed it as survival. As Andy Warhol said, ‘Perception precedes reality.’

4. Insist on simplicity. Complexity favors giants. Simplicity is where underdogs win.

Play the long game. Jobs wasn’t after one deal — he was building the future of music.

The Risk vs. Reward of Rebalancing

Jobs took risks. Flat 99-cent pricing could have backfired. The labels could have walked away. But by pushing for balance, he won more than a deal, he reshaped an industry.

That’s the reward: when you rebalance power, you don’t just survive the negotiation. You often create something lasting.

Closing Thought

The next time you walk into a negotiation feeling like the underdog, don’t ask, ‘How do I beat the giant?’

Ask instead: How do I make the giant need me?

Because that’s how David really wins.

If you’d love to dive deeper into some of the resources that inspired me to write this, I’ve dropped the links below;

Obsolete Sony’s Newsletter

How Sony Shaped Steve Jobs’ Vision

It’s no secret that the Walkman influenced the iPod. And of course, Sony’s broader impact on Apple has been widely acknowledged, which makes sense given Sony's role as one of the most important tech companies of the 20th century. But the influence runs deeper. What truly shaped Apple’s early ethos wasn't just Sony, but a broader set of Japanese values: simplicity, craftsmanship, and a deep respect for the user experience. Steve Jobs didn’t just admire Sony’s products. He absorbed the cultural DNA behind them and reinterpreted it through a Western lens. Apple’s design language and user-first approach weren’t born in isolation, they were built on a foundation laid decades earlier across the Pacific. From the art prints that captivated him to the ceramics that refined his aesthetic, Jobs saw in Japan, and especially in Sony, a blueprint for fusing art and technology into tools that transformed lives…

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a year ago · 84 likes · 5 comments · ObsoleteSony

A great podcast about Napster versus the Record Labels

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Picture the so-called “alpha.”

He strides into the boardroom like a predator on the hunt. Thinking that a mere stare and growl will immediately close the deal. He pounds the table when he doesn’t get his way, craving to push his way out of any situation.

Movies love him. Business gurus tell you to “be him.” Some self-help books promise his aggression is the secret to winning.

But here’s the truth: this wolf doesn’t exist.

Not in nature.

And not in leadership or negotiation that actually lasts.

The “alpha wolf” was never the ruthless dominator we were told to emulate. In fact, clinging to that myth may be sabotaging your ability to lead, to negotiate, and to build trust.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anyone should be a push over. So lets dive in…

Where the Alpha Myth Came From

The idea of the “alpha wolf” traces back to 1940s studies of wolves in captivity. Researchers saw that one wolf appeared to dominate the others and labeled it the “alpha.”

That idea was exported to human behavior — business, dating, leadership — as shorthand for strength through aggression.

The problem is that it wasn’t quite right.

In the wild, wolf packs are family units: parents and their offspring. Leadership isn’t about intimidation; it’s about guidance, teaching, and cohesion. Wolves succeed by hunting together, not tearing each other apart.

Even David Mech, the biologist who popularized the term in the 1970s, later spent decades correcting it. By then, however, Hollywood had already turned the “alpha” into a cinematic archetype: the lone wolf, the hard-charging boss, the winner-takes-all negotiator. I love the movies and some of them are my favourites, but they are just fiction.

Why the Myth Persists in Business & Negotiation

Aggressive posturing is simple, easy to dramatize, and temporarily effective.

The funny thing is even I once fell into this trap myself — bringing more “alpha energy” into my negotiations. It led to some quick wins, sure, but the cost was broken relationships and long-term setbacks.

‘Break through walls’ they would say. I always thought, why break through the wall when you can just walk through the door, doesn’t the latter require less effort and if you’re trying to negotiate, you’d be conserving energy for multiple other battles you might face up the road.

As Sun Tzu advised:

“In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.”

— The Art of War, Chapter 2

True efficiency isn’t about brute force — it’s about strategy, timing, and conserving energy for battles that matter.

What the Real “Alpha” Looks Like

If we drop the myth and look at both wolves in the wild and effective human leaders, a very different picture emerges.

In wolf packs: leaders protect, guide, and nurture. They keep the group cohesive so everyone thrives.

In organizations: research shows similar truths.

• A meta-analysis of leadership effectiveness (Judge et al., Journal of Applied Psychology, 2002) found that traits like conscientiousness and integrity predict long-term leadership success.

• Daniel Goleman’s research on emotional intelligence demonstrates that empathy, self-awareness, and relationship management drive high-performing leaders more than dominance does.

The Harvard Program on Negotiation shows that integrative, collaborative approaches — where parties look for mutual gain rather than trying to overpower each other — lead to more durable, successful agreements.

Traits to Actually Emulate

So if the “alpha wolf” stereotype misleads us, what traits should we cultivate instead?

Here’s a practical toolkit:

• 👂 Listening — Extract the real motivations of the other side before pushing your own. Negotiation begins with understanding.

• ⏳ Strategic Patience — Know when to wait, when to act, and when to walk away. Timing often decides outcomes.

• 🤝 Integrity — A deal that betrays trust is not a win. Trust is the invisible fabric holding future negotiations together.
  

• 🫂 Service-Oriented Leadership — Like wolves, teams succeed when they act in the collective interest. Ensure every stakeholder gets a piece of the success.
  

• 🔄 Adaptability — No one-size-fits-all style works. Cultures, personalities, and contexts differ — your approach should flex with them.

These aren’t just soft skills. They are performance drivers. Leaders who embody them consistently outperform “alpha-style” aggressors in both results and loyalty.

Why This Matters

The myth tells us that strength comes from domination — who can shout louder, push harder, and win at all costs.

The truth? Strength comes from trust, respect, and vision.

In the wild, wolves survive not because one animal bullies the others, but because they move as a unit — each one playing their role, guided by trust.

In business and negotiation, the same is true.

The real alpha isn’t the loudest voice in the room.

The real alpha is the one who listens, protects, and creates outcomes where the whole pack thrives.

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Over the past year, I’ve noticed that a lot of people still treat AI as a fancy search engine. They ask it for facts, maybe a quick summary, or to draft a few lines of copy. But that’s like hiring a full board of advisors and only asking them to fetch you the newspaper. The real power lies in using AI as your strategic counsel — a set of perspectives designed to catch your blind spots before they become missteps. You remain the decision-maker, but with AI as your backstage war room, your odds of making the right call dramatically improve.

Why Chess is the Ultimate Strategic Sandbox

Chess has long been the training ground for strategic thinking. Every move requires you to anticipate consequences, plan several steps ahead, and manage trade-offs under pressure. The board is limited, but the possibilities are infinite. This combination of structure and creativity mirrors the real-world decisions executives face every day — especially in high-stakes negotiations.

My dad first got me into chess. He'd come home late from work, and playing chess was one of the things we'd do together as a family. Yes, I know, super nerdy, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's amazing how much it shaped my thinking. I was hooked, and the biggest lesson I learned was that you can always win, no matter what pieces your opponent has or how strong they are. One wrong move (by them or you!) can flip the whole game, so you’ve always got to think ahead, be patient, and play smart.

From the Chessboard to the Negotiation Table

Before any negotiation, I spend a lot of time with the team, simulating various outcomes. This helps me tremendously in terms of my preparation, so we can strategically plan the opening, middle and closing game.

Negotiations, like chess, are about positioning and timing. The key is to know when to attack, when to defend, and when to make a small move that opens the board for bigger plays later. AI can help here by simulating the “game” in advance — predicting counter-moves, mapping your possible strategies, and showing you where you might be walking into a trap.

This isn’t about replacing your instincts or experience. It’s about giving yourself a rehearsal space where you can test approaches without burning political capital in real life. The more you practice, the more automatic your strategic thinking becomes.

How to Prompt AI for Negotiation Simulations

When you're looking for AI to be your negotiation chess buddy, remember: details are key! The more info you throw in, the more spot-on and realistic your simulation will be. Here's a cool trick I use, for example, with ChatGPT: make a new folder for every project or person you're dealing with. That way, the AI keeps tabs on your chat history and uses that whole folder of conversations as context for your deal – seriously, this is a game-changer! So, what should you toss into your prompt?

1. The players – Who’s involved? Their seniority, cultural background, and decision-making style.

2. The context – The market environment, internal company politics, and any historical relationship between the parties.

3. Your goal – What you want in both the short term (the “next move”) and the long term (the “checkmate”).

4. Constraints – Any non-negotiables, time limits, or political sensitivities.

5. Possible scenarios – Ask the AI to map out best case, neutral, and worst case outcomes, and the moves leading to each.

Example prompt:

“Act as a world class negotiation coach. I’m meeting with the COO of a Middle Eastern family-owned business. I’m proposing a partnership to launch a new product on Uber. They are process-driven, hierarchical, and the COO has been there 25+ years. He is generally conservative in his approach, risk averse but appreciates new technology breakthroughs. He is the key influencer to the CEO and critical to the long term success of the deal. His colleagues on the board are skeptical of our deal and he faces a lot of challenges from naysayers within the company.

My goal is to get him to trial a new product using existing facilities instead of waiting to launch a full scale business with a new facility, which could take 12 months. In the long term I want him to be vested in rolling out the new facility in a sustainable manner. Map out the negotiation like a chess game: opening, middle, and closing stages, with potential counter-moves and my best responses.”

This will give you a game plan, highlight risks, and even suggest specific phrases to bridge cultural or communication gaps. Don't worry about having the 'right' AI tool; I've tried this across a few of them, so don't let the type of AI hold you back from using this kind of prompt. They all give you enough of what you need to become a better deal maker.

The Chessboard Guide to Closing Deals

Once you’ve got your inspiration and scenario analysis from the response, you’ll find that it gives potential possibilities that you may not have even thought of, this is the game changer. However, if you think an AI can do your job… you haven’t used AI enough. The reality is that AI creates these outputs based on the prompt you’ve provided it and context it has, BUT no one has as much data and reasoning capability as you, the Deal Lead. Use the information as inputs into your broader strategy, not as the strategy itself. To help guide you, I’ve created a set of principles that are related to how the chess game is played below, to help you formulate your strategy.

1. Control the Center → Control the Agenda & Key Issues

• Chess: The center squares give your pieces maximum mobility and influence. Whoever controls them often controls the game’s flow.

• Negotiation: Identify and anchor the conversation around the most influential issues — the ones that shape all other terms (pricing model, delivery timelines, scope). Keep the discussion where you are strongest.

• Example: If your advantage is speed-to-market, keep bringing the conversation back to timelines and first-mover advantage instead of letting it drift to cost comparisons.

2. Develop Pieces → Mobilize Your Resources Early

• Chess: Don’t leave pieces undeveloped on the back rank; get them active so they can influence the game.

• Negotiation: Bring in the right stakeholders, data, and proof points early so they can start influencing the other side’s thinking. Don’t “hold back” critical assets until it’s too late.

• Example: Introduce operational experts or share pilot success data in early meetings to create credibility and momentum.

3. King Safety → Protect Your Core Interests

• Chess: A vulnerable king is an easy target; keeping it safe prevents disaster.

• Negotiation: Know your non-negotiables (budget limits, IP rights, reputational risks) and shield them from unnecessary exposure. Avoid making concessions that could undermine your core position.

• Example: If your pilot success hinges on using your existing tech stack, protect that requirement from being negotiated away in side discussions.

4. Pawn Structure → Manage Long-Term Commitments

• Chess: Pawns may seem small, but their placement can lock in strengths or create lasting weaknesses.

• Negotiation equivalent: Every small concession (payment terms, reporting frequency, minor deliverables) can set long-term precedents. Think about the downstream effect before making changes.

• Example: Offering a “one-time exception” on a fee could become the expected standard for all future deals.

5. Piece Activity → Keep Momentum and Influence High

• Chess meaning: Inactive pieces can’t help you; active ones exert pressure and create opportunities.

• Negotiation equivalent: Keep your proposals, communications, and options in active play so the other side can’t dictate the tempo.

• Example: Regularly follow up with value-added insights between meetings so they keep seeing you as the proactive, driving force.

6. Material Balance → Trade Smartly

• Chess: Count material constantly; trade when it gives you a positional or tactical advantage.

• Negotiation: Be conscious of what you’re giving up and what you’re getting in return. Sometimes it’s worth trading a less important term to gain a decisive advantage on a core issue.

• Example: Offer flexibility on start date in exchange for exclusivity in a key market.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

The best negotiators are rarely the loudest in the room — they are the best-prepared. AI is giving us the ability to simulate, rehearse, and refine before the real moment comes. And in doing so, it’s training us to think more strategically, anticipate more clearly, and react more intelligently.

If used well, AI doesn’t just make us faster. It makes us better. It sharpens our judgment, strengthens our adaptability, and accelerates the growth of the one asset that compounds forever: our decision-making ability.

The game is changing. I am personally extremely excited about our future with AI. And for those willing to play chess with AI, the future will be won before they ever sit down at the table.

We’re halfway through the year, and momentum is high. Whether you’re hitting your stride or feeling the pressure of goals still unmet, this is a good moment to pause and reset. I wanted to share a brief “note to self” that I often return to—something that’s helped me stay grounded and make better decisions, ultimately leading to better deals.

1. Reflect first, act second.

Reflection is the single most important step when starting almost anything. This is the fundamental capability that makes us vastly different from other species. It allows us to view ourselves from the perspective of someone else, giving us insight into our actions that allow us to act differently going forward. I genuinely believe this is our superpower.

Think through your deals, what has worked well and what hasn’t? Given all the feedback received last year, how would you change things going forward to meet your objectives? I know this sounds simple, and it is, so it should be very easy to do. It's backed by science too.

2. A list is not a strategy; start with strategy.

Everyone has a list, either on their phone, a piece of paper, or whichever note-taking device you have. However, this is a list of actions based on your previous thinking and may not include your revised strategy after you've taken the time to reflect. So don't start the second half of the year as a continuation of your previous to-do list. If you're the captain of the ship and the destination has changed, don't use the old coordinates.

As a deal maker, your choices need to be guided by strategy. There are various definitions of what strategy is and how you formulate them (I'll save that for a future post). I really like the one below, which articulates this in a very simple way. The only thing I would add is that it includes sacrifices (i.e., things you actively decide not to do) as you define the final strategy and shift to execution. This is generally guided by the question of 'what game are you playing?'. I love the old saying: Chess players don't roll dice.

3. Start now

“Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over.” - Jeff Bezos

Plot your path and take action. Fear can sometimes stop you, especially the thoughts of what your colleagues or business partners may think about your new strategy. If you've spent time reflecting and creating the revised strategy, the worst thing that could happen is disagreement. Conversations with diverse or conflicting opinions ultimately lead to better outcomes for everyone, so even if there is some disagreement, It's always a win-win scenario.

Closing deals is one of the most satisfying feelings, and it’s ultimately that feeling we chase for joy. Meeting timelines is critical, and failing to hit the mark can make that joy slip away. The time pressure is real, with the latter half of the year typically being crunch time. You’ve invested significant effort building momentum, and you can feel it’s about to pay off.

The reality, though, is that these deals are dependent on people, which drastically increases your risk. This is especially true for deals with a large number of complex stakeholders, each playing a role in the decision-making process. It's much easier when one person makes a decision, but it gets very tricky once your stakeholder list grows. Sometimes this can grow to up to 100 people for a given deal. Just take a step back and think about this: these are 100 different opinions, values, cultural backgrounds, and objectives. This complexity can stall your progress, so you need to do a few things to close the deal, even when you’re under extreme time pressure.

Make things ‘feel’ less risky and you’ll close

In a fascinating book called Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Kahneman & Tversky discuss Prospect Theory, which mentions that people feel the pain of loss more acutely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain. For instance, receiving a $300 concert ticket might bring a small amount of happiness (utility), but losing a $300 concert ticket we already owned would cause significantly more unhappiness.

I’d like to share a personal example, which I’m sure everyone can resonate with. I worked with a large potential partner to strike a deal that's going to catapult the growth of both our companies. The partner and I were committing significant resources, which include cutting-edge tech.

We’ve done our math, the strategy makes sense, and I trust my intuition on this deal. But they are afraid to take the risk at face value, especially when it comes to new technology. They kept finding ways to avoid or delay moving forward, because if it didn't work out, they would risk their reputation and P&L. I know that feeling quite well; however, the deal must get done as I’m under time pressure. It was already November, and I need to close this to set the business up for growth in the following year.

I knew that to close this deal, I had to reduce the perceived risk. This is crucial because as soon as anything is seen as a potential loss, people will back away. By creating options, I made the partner feel the upside was much higher and the downside very limited. I introduced options to include higher-margin products, explore other business avenues, and shorten the review periods for the overall deal. This reduced their perception of risk through the creation of options. The partner then felt that, no matter what happened, they were always winning—and that's the art of it.

The science backs it up too, as Kahneman and Tversky’s work sums it up quite well;

• Loss Aversion: In prospect theory, losses are weighted roughly twice as heavily as gains. Creating options helps mitigate this by offering pathways to avoid or minimize losses, making decisions feel less risky.

• Reference Points: People evaluate options relative to a reference point (e.g., the status quo). Multiple options allow decision-makers to redefine their reference point, reducing the perceived risk of deviating from it.

• Certainty Effect: People overvalue certain outcomes (as seen in the preference for concert tickets). Offering a “certain” option alongside riskier ones can make the decision feel safer, even if the objective risk remains unchanged.

Deals rarely follow a straight path to the finish line; you sometimes have to chart a slightly different course to reduce the time to close when facing obstacles. Think of yourself as an explorer charting a path across the Atlantic Ocean. The great explorers knew they had limited time to find land before running out of supplies. Therefore, each time they faced a storm, they didn't wait for it to pass but rather charted a new path to reduce the headwind and keep sailing. Sometimes that initially took them in a slightly different direction but they ultimately still got to their destination.

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It's been a few weeks since President Trump's visit to the Middle East, and now that the media coverage has subsided, I wanted to delve into the long-term implications. A multitude of deals totaling $3.6 trillion have been made across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. While various themes such as AI, Infrastructure, Defence, and Energy are prominent, AI particularly captured my attention. I wanted to delve into the practical significance of these massive deals, including data centers and AI, to understand their impact on us and how they will shape the region and the world.

Artificial Intelligence is the New Electricity

Andrew Ng famously compared the impact of AI on the world to how electricity was back in the day. His discussion at Stanford back in 2017 resonates more than ever today. We can affirmatively say that AI isn’t just a buzz word anymore; it's a basic part of how digital stuff works. Just like electricity totally changed industries then and keeps making new things happen now, AI is doing the same.

Today we take something as simple as the light bulb very lightly (excuse the pun; I’m well known for dry Dad jokes) and the way in which we receive power, which is via commercial power plants that distribute electricity. As we know, electricity wasn’t invented; it always existed naturally. We just found ways over time to harness its power through our direct intervention. We progressed from understanding that electricity is different from magnetism to investing in the first battery, discovering electromagnetic induction, and finally creating the first commercial power plant.

AI, much like intelligence itself, also wasn’t invented; the concept of learning and reasoning has always existed in nature. We’ve found ways to scale this. We progressed from early neural network theories to building the first machine learning models, discovering deep learning breakthroughs, and finally creating scalable AI systems that drive industries worldwide.

What do these AI deals mean for the Middle East?

Two weeks ago, a flurry of deals across various parts of the AI Value Chain was announced, representing a phenomenal showcase of agreements poised to accelerate national progress. Similar to the harnessing of electricity in the 1900s, the Middle East is now embracing artificial intelligence, a move that will impact generations to come. The development of AI infrastructure can be compared to the build-out of electricity infrastructure, but on a scale and at a speed that is 100 times greater than what we have previously experienced.

Data centers are like power stations, fueled by data. The AI application layer will be an invisible intelligence layer that surges across the grid, powering everything we engage with. ChatGPT is like the light bulb, bringing value and increased productivity daily. We will fundamentally require less cognitive effort for many things, freeing up our minds to become more intuitive, creative, and free to build things for the next generation.

The scale and pace will be much faster, because if you think about a power distribution network, this takes a lot longer given the physical infrastructure required to distribute electricity, you need pylons and cables to run 100s of miles. Once a data centre is up and running, the distribution of the technology can be instantaneous as it flows invisibility through the internet.

What makes the middle east so well positioned for this?

1. Leadership and Innovation

AI data centers provide the computational backbone—high-performance computing, vast storage, and advanced GPUs—needed to train and deploy sophisticated AI models, akin to how electricity powered industrial machinery. The UAE’s G42, for example, is developing a 5-gigawatt AI campus in Abu Dhabi, the largest outside the U.S., in partnership with American firms, enabling the region to host cutting-edge AI research and applications.

An example of a cutting-edge application is the deployment of self-driving vehicles. These vehicles will make decisions every millisecond, which will be safer and more efficient than humans driving. AI powers this, allowing the car to learn from a large amount of data that has to be processed through local compute and models that could be hosted within the region. One of the partnerships I’m most excited about (purely because of my deep involvement) is the Uber & Abdul Latif Jameel deal. This deal will accelerate the adoption of autonomous vehicles and create 30,000 earning opportunities for Saudi Nationals through the deployment of a next-generation fleet that includes both aspects.

Beyond autonomous vehicles, Saudi Arabia’s Humain, backed by the Public Investment Fund, is building “AI factories” with Nvidia’s advanced GPUs to develop Arabic-language AI models and cloud services. Why is this a significant milestone you might ask? Can’t chatGPT do everything I need, including complex tasks via Arabic. It can, but it won’t be great, and it’s not what a region like the middle east needs to accelerate. 

Let’s take a model like ALLAM, the first Arabic-first language model. The model needs to be proactively exposed to a large diverse amounts of Arabic text, including formal (e.g., news articles, books), informal (e.g., social media, forums), and regional dialects (e.g., Egyptian, Gulf, Levantine Arabic). This requires dedicated effort and compute to create the infrastructure which great products and services can be built. 

Furthermore, Quantinuum and Al Rabban Capital announced a $1 billion joint venture to advance quantum computing adoption in Qatar and the Gulf, expanding on Quantinuum's existing work with Hamad Bin Khalifa University and the Qatar Center for Quantum Computing. Quantum computing helps us solve problems in the world that existing supercomputers cannot. It’s tremendous to have focus on these types of latest technologies available to the youth, to develop this ecosystem.  

These facilities position the Middle East at the forefront of next-generation technology, empowering Middle Eastern nations to develop indigenous AI solutions customized for regional demands, such as smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and healthcare innovations, with the potential for export to neighboring regions.

2. Strategic Positioning

The strategic location of the Middle East, bridging Europe, Asia, and Africa, makes it an ideal hub for AI data centers serving these areas, much like electricity grids connected distant regions. The UAE’s AI campus, for instance, can provide low-latency services to nearly half the world’s population within 3,200 km. By partnering with U.S. tech giants and securing access to advanced chips like Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are aligning with these technology ecosystems.

Here’s a great clip of Chamath on the All In Podcast (one of my all time favourite podcasts) talking about the strategic positioning of the region and how the latest Trump visit is aimed at shifting the China <> US dynamic.

3. Infrastructure and Sustainability Advantages

The Middle East’s abundant energy resources, land availability, and business-friendly regulations mirror the scalability of electricity in enabling industrial growth. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE leverage cheap energy and rapid permitting to build data centers quickly, unlike Europe’s power-constrained markets. For example, Saudi Arabia’s Cloud Computing Special Economic Zone (CCSEZ) offers tax incentives, projected to account for 30% of the nation’s ICT spending by 2030. Additionally, sustainability efforts, such as the UAE’s net-zero 2050 strategy and solar-powered data centers like Khazna’s in Masdar City, align with global environmental goals, ensuring long-term viability.

The Middle East is now uniquely situated to rapidly advance, signaling a shift away from regional conflict, towards peace and economic prosperity, as Chamath noted. This unprecedented economic alliance is driving technological innovation poised to generate widespread abundance, similar to the transformative impact of electricity in the early 1900s.

I’m excited that we get to be a part of this transformation, it’s really quite something.

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I’m writing this article to give you my perspective on how to prepare for your first meeting. This might be a make or break situation for most dealmakers. The first meeting is the most critical to set yourself up for success. It’s not the end of the world if it goes pear shaped, however it will take you much longer to claw back your way, so do everything possible to make sure you put your best foot forward every time.

Studies consistently show that first impressions form fast—within seconds—and stick hard. A 2006 study by Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov at Princeton found that people judge trustworthiness, competence, and likability based on facial cues in as little as 100 milliseconds. In a business context, that means whoever you’re meeting—client, partner, or investor—has already sized you up before you’ve finished shaking hands.

Preparation is arguably the most important step, if you have two options, prepare for 10 mins or don’t prepare at all, that 10 mins could win over your deal. Why is it so important? For me personally I find that it gives me the confidence to maneuver in a meeting, think of your meeting as a dance, where you’re dancing with someone for the first time. If you only know the 1-2 step and your deal partner starts to do the waltz, then you're not going to win them over. Preparation gives you the confidence to make many moves, which you’ve learned in advance.

The meeting that started Nike

In what I think might be the greatest biography of all time, Shoe Dog, Phil Knight explains how he went about securing the Onitsuka distribution deal, which I would love to hone in on within this post. In a very quick summary, Phil Knight is the founder of Nike, before he started making them, he decided to import running shoes from Japan. At 24, fresh from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Phil was driven by a vision articulated in his MBA thesis: “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?” This paper, which analyzed the potential for Japanese running shoes to disrupt the U.S. market dominated by German brands like Adidas and Puma, gave him a strategic framework. Phil Knight’s first deal with Onitsuka Tiger in November 1962 was a pivotal moment that laid the foundation for what would become Nike.

So how did he prepare?

In Tokyo, Phil sought advice from expatriates running The Importer, a magazine. They provided critical cultural insights, warning him about Japan’s “culture of indirection,” where direct refusals are rare, and negotiations require patience and humility. This advice shaped his approach, cautioning him against being overly assertive. They also confirmed his interest in Onitsuka Tiger, a brand he’d identified as promising due to its quality and affordability. Knight then made a simple phone call to Onitsuka’s office in Kobe to secure an appointment—an action that reflects the era’s less formal business environment and his boldness despite limited resources.

Logistically, Phil traveled on a seven-hour train ride from Tokyo to Kobe in August 1962, standing for much of it due to crowded conditions. Clearly he prioritized his pitch over comfort. Mentally, he rehearsed his pitch during the journey, focusing on the U.S. market’s potential and Onitsuka’s ability to undercut German brands. His runner’s background (with a personal best of 4:13 in the mile) gave him a personal connection to the product, allowing him to speak authentically about the importance of quality shoes.

The first engagement took place at Onitsuka’s headquarters in Kobe, where Phil met with Onitsuka executives including export manager Ken Miyazaki, without a formal company name. When asked whom he represented, he improvised, recalling blue ribbons from his childhood track victories, and named his nonexistent company “Blue Ribbon Sports” (BRS). This spur-of-the-moment decision was a bold bluff, but it worked because Onitsuka was keen to expand internationally and saw Phil as a potential entry point to the U.S. market.

Phil pitched the idea that the American shoe market was ripe for disruption. He argued that Onitsuka’s Tiger shoes, with their high quality and lower price point, could penetrate U.S. stores and compete with Adidas and Puma. His Stanford research backed his claim, though he presented it without a formal presentation. His passion as a runner likely added authenticity, bridging the gap between his lack of credentials and his bold vision.

The Onitsuka executives were receptive, partly because they had been considering U.S. expansion. After two hours, Miyazaki and Phil reached an agreement: Phil would represent Onitsuka Tiger as a distributor in the western United States. The deal was sealed with a handshake, and he was asked to have his father send a $50 money order to initiate a shipment of sample shoes to Portland, Oregon. This low initial investment reflects Onitsuka’s willingness to take a chance on a young, unproven entrepreneur, possibly due to Kihachiro Onitsuka’s (pictured below) own entrepreneurial spirit and empathy for Knight’s ambition.

What should you do to prepare?

Define Your Objective

Before any meeting, clarify what you aim to achieve. If you’re unsure, try the “Fisherman’s Test.” When a fisherman returns from weeks at sea, their reward isn’t just the fish they catch—it’s the joy and approval of their family when they bring home their haul. Similarly, imagine returning to your office: What outcome would earn that same enthusiastic reaction from your team or management? What would they consider your “big fish”? That’s your objective for the meeting.

Some might argue only closing the deal counts as a win. Use your judgment—while you may not finalize the deal in one meeting, what other significant milestone could you achieve? A signed term sheet? A follow-up commitment? Identify what matters most.

Phil Knight exemplified this clarity when he met with Onitsuka Tiger. His objective was clear: secure distribution rights for their shoes in the U.S. Despite not yet having a formal company, he focused on the goal, trusting that details like incorporation could be resolved later—a bold move that paid off.

People Before the Company

Research the individuals attending the meeting. Go beyond their job titles—explore their backgrounds, personal interests, hobbies, and accomplishments. Platforms like LinkedIn often reveal professional milestones, while social media might highlight their passions. If they’ve spoken at a conference or on a panel (especially if footage is available online), watch it. This free resource reveals their tone, behavioral cues, and key areas of interest, giving you a strategic edge in building rapport.

For Phil Knight, this meant engaging with local expatriates in Japan to understand the cultural nuances of Japanese business negotiations. These insights shaped his approach, preparing him for Onitsuka’s unique style of deal-making.

Then Understand the Company

Next, dive into the company’s goals and objectives. Has their strategy shifted recently? For example, are they expanding into new markets or doubling down on innovation? At a macro level, consider their role in the broader economy. Are they backed by government initiatives or positioned to dominate a specific sector?

Equally critical is understanding their competition. Research competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to gain perspective on the company’s market position. Use this knowledge tactfully in discussions—strike a balance between showing commitment to the partnership and subtly signaling you have other options.

Phil Knight’s preparation was rooted in deep research. His Stanford Graduate School of Business paper, “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?”, analyzed Japan’s economic landscape and identified opportunities to challenge dominant players like Adidas and Puma. This groundwork gave him a nuanced understanding of Onitsuka’s potential and the competitive dynamics at play.

I hope I’ve given you some inspiration to focus on preparation. In a deal making environment or just about any, it’s one of the critical variables that you have control of which can 10x your probability of success.

Stay ready.

Shavaye

What is Business Development?

In "The Sumo Advantage" by Bernie Brenner, he says, ‘It’s not about selling more of an already-developed product or service to a waiting market. Instead, it’s about recognizing a market opportunity, envisioning what a solution might look like, and then pursuing established partners to completely own that market.’

Business Development is about looking at the white space that exists between two partners by leveraging existing synergies that exist between them. In simple terms, this means, if we’re both great at something, can we tap into a new market that doesn’t exist today?

Nike & Apple Partnership

A great example of this is the partnership between Nike and Apple (I’ll dive deeper into this deal in the coming weeks). To summarize, Apple had recently launched the Apple Watch, a new wearable device, and looked at entering the fitness realm. Nike has a substantial market share within this market segment and could tap into the wearables market with one of the leading tech companies globally. Enter the white space for both brands… not long after their deal, the Apple Watch became the best-selling watch in the world, outselling the entire Swiss watch industry. Now, this is not entirely due to their partnership with Nike, but it definitely served as one of their core strategies given the brand perception and access to fitness-focused individuals (the partnership sales are not disclosed publicly).

Sales - specific with shorter cycles

Sales is about selling an existing product or service that has been developed for an identified market. Here, your in-house team has identified a need that either business, retail, or some combination of customers could use. Using Apple as an example, while they are not a traditional B2B company, they have created a B2B or Sales team that sells existing products and services to small businesses. They have identified an opportunity to sell into this market, and most strategies such as this require a ‘tailored’ approach leveraging a sales team to provide dedicated support and additional discounts. The biggest value a B2B customer receives here is a volume discount and dedicated support, and all Apple has to do is scale the team or sales strategies in order to increase revenue. The key difference here is that they are not entering a new market with a differentiated product, but rather a new segment that will leverage their existing products and services. The sales approach is just different. Sales has a much shorter deal cycle, typically ranging from 1 day to 12 months, while a BD cycle could take up to 3 years.

I know I may be oversimplifying this, as there are numerous examples of how companies create a specific product for a new market segment; however, the key difference is that sales ‘sells’ products while BD creates new markets in a more bespoke strategic manner.