Essays by Ry Walker

Essays on AI, startups, and software engineering by Ry Walker, founder of Tembo and Astronomer.

all agents ai apis architecture

astronomer automation bottleneck build-vs-buy business-model code-review coding-agents communication competition context context-engineering coordination culture customer-development customer-success data decision-making developer-experience developer-tools devex economics engineering enterprise evaluation experience founders fundraising future go-to-market governance growth gtm human-in-the-loop incentives infrastructure integration intuition judgment knowledge-management knowledge-work kubernetes leadership learning maintenance management market marketing measurement memory moats nuance observability open-source operationalization operations outbound personal personal-agents personalization phases pitching platform platforms playbook process procurement product prototyping quality rag reasoning recommendations retention review sales security seed shipping skills software-engineering startups storytelling strategy

tembo tooling trust unit-economics workflow

Apr 25, 2026	Start With the Mirror, Not the Model Pick one process your business actually runs. Record people doing it. Now you have something an agent can act on — and a foundation for measuring whether it works.
Apr 18, 2026	The Mirror Problem 95% of enterprise AI projects fail not because the models are weak. They fail because the company cannot describe its own processes well enough for an agent to act.