I have a friend who runs a hedge fund. For a couple of years, the market was remarkably boring—just steadily climbing without much variation. I'd ask him about it, expecting celebration, and he'd say something that stuck with me: "It's awful. It's hard to make money when there's no volatility. There's no movement, no way to differentiate yourself."
I thought about that observation for a long time. Isn't that true across industries? If you're really good and truly innovating, you should love volatility. You should be dying for more of it. Because the more volatility you have, the more opportunity exists. The distance between the highs and the lows—that's where value gets measured. And that distance separates those who are really good from everyone else.
The Opportunity in Turbulence
If the economy is booming, our customers need to get exceptionally good at making it as efficient as possible to move product from point A to point B as fast as humanly possible. If the economy starts declining, they need to make it as cost-effective as possible without losing their effectiveness. In either direction, there's an opportunity. There's opportunity for us, opportunity for anyone—if you're not afraid of volatility.
From our perspective, we're not afraid. We don't look around hoping nothing changes. In fact, if you examine our product roadmap, one of the core pillars is volatility. We assume volatility is going to happen forever, and we hope it stays. Obviously, we don't want anything catastrophic to happen to economies, countries, or companies. But volatility itself? Volatility is great, and it's going to be a fundamental part of our roadmap forever.
A lot of the releases we have planned deal directly with this reality. They address the idea that things are constantly dynamic. How do we alert customers ahead of time through anomaly detection? How do we enable rapid carrier onboarding when markets shift? How do we adjust for factors in the market that are inevitable but unexpected? These aren't theoretical exercises—they're the foundation of what we're building.
The Snowball Effect of Innovation
Three years ago, our AI strategy was nascent, but we’re well past the blank slate. Now we're focused on acceleration. How can we do more? How do we move things from internal to external? How do we take external innovations and bring them inside? It's a much easier proposition to accelerate at speed when you invest the way we do.
What's Actually Coming
I've seen the roadmap over the last two quarters. What we've launched has been pretty incredible. What's coming in the next two quarters is going to be remarkable. I'm not prone to hyperbole about our own work, but the velocity at which we're moving—and the sophistication of what we're releasing—represents a fundamental shift.
We're moving capabilities from theoretical to operational. Features that once required extensive manual intervention are becoming automated. Systems that once operated independently are becoming integrated. The platform isn't just getting better incrementally; it's becoming something fundamentally different.
Building the Team for What's Next
Beyond product development, I'm excited about continuing to scale the team. The people we added from EM6 are exceptional. We're looking at a couple of other acquisitions now, and the people at those companies are equally spectacular. When you're winning, talented people want to be on a winning team.
Everyone keeps telling me AI is going to do everything and we won't need people anymore. I don't know when that's supposed to happen, and honestly, I'm not looking forward to it. The people I work with are tremendous—genuinely amazing. For now, you still need great people to innovate. You still need great people to execute. I'm a collector of incredible talent, and this is a great place to be if you're an innovator who wants to win.
Looking Forward to Turbulence
So what am I looking forward to in 2026? Volatility. Turbulence. Dynamic markets. I'm excited about uncertainty because that's where we differentiate. I'm excited about the snowball effect of our innovation—watching momentum build. I'm excited about watching the team grow and watching the company extend its lead on innovation.
The market will shift. Conditions will change. Unexpected challenges will emerge. And we'll be ready—not despite the volatility, but because of it. That's what makes this interesting.