Summer reflections, pt. 1
Summer has a strange kind of rhythm. Things tend to slow down – the world gets quieter, inboxes emptier, and there's suddenly more room to think. I’ve been taking that space this season to look back a bit, especially at the past half year. Because while it feels like not much is happening in the moment, there’s actually a lot going on elsewhere. Especially in tech.
Technology doesn’t really do "summer mode". It keeps pushing forward at breakneck speed. In just the past six months, we’ve seen an avalanche of tools, capabilities, breakthroughs. This morning alone, I read that Figma is heading for its IPO – with a valuation of 16.6 billion. That’s a number so big it feels almost unreal. For the founders, it must be beyond anything they could’ve imagined.
And yet, we’ve seen this story before, haven’t we? Companies building something sleek and scalable, lifted up by the incredible momentum of AI. That’s the backdrop to almost everything in tech now: AI is the enabler, the driver, the one common denominator behind so many of these valuations. And some of it is, undoubtedly, impressive.
Still, I find myself feeling a bit... split. These are great tools – but are they really that great? I don’t love Figma. I don’t love Lovable. I do like Replit, I’ll admit – it just suits me better. But that’s the point: taste matters. Design matters. Fit matters. Not everything is for everyone.
There’s also a question of value. These tools can speed things up – writing, designing, coding – but are they actually making us better? Are we thinking more clearly, writing more meaningfully, creating with more intent? I’m not convinced. Speed is useful, but it’s not the same as quality. And just because something is faster doesn’t mean it’s better.
As H1 draws to a close and H2 begins to warm up, it’s the perfect moment to pause and take stock. Personally, I find myself circling back to my time at university. That’s where a lot of this started for me – the fascination with how tech could reshape communication. I was studying digital marketing, already wondering why our methods felt so outdated, even as new possibilities were everywhere.
When I wrote my bachelor’s dissertation, I was focused on programmatic advertising. Back then, it was still gaining traction, especially outside of digital-native spaces. I remember thinking: why aren’t we applying this in more innovative ways? Everything is digital now – so why are we still treating content like it’s static? Why not tailor ads based not just on who someone is, but how they’re watching? What time of day, what kind of show, what kind of mood?
It wasn’t about hyper-personalisation for its own sake. It was about flow. About experience. What if advertising didn’t interrupt the viewing experience, but integrated into it in a way that made sense? What if it was additive instead of disruptive?
These ideas still follow me. The tools may change, but the core challenge doesn’t: how do we use them to create things that are not just quicker, but better? How do we respect the person on the other side of the screen?
