Hey everyone,
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As this newsletter continues to grow, it’s time for a slight upgrade. 

More than 1,400 impactful professionals, including 23 Fortune 500 tech executives, read my newsletter regularly. 

I thank each and every one of you for your interest and loyalty.

It’s time to zoom out and spend our time more efficiently. 

I’ve noticed that my “zoom out” IT consulting posts on LinkedIn receive significantly higher engagement. 

That’s why I will focus more on sharing what’s been on my mind as a hands-on founder of a prominent IT consulting company, what we’re encountering in the various industries we serve, and the lessons you can learn from our past, present, and future endeavors. 

Effective immediately, this newsletter is no longer called “Tech Flavor.” 
Please welcome: “Zoom Out.”

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If you're new here, welcome to Zoom Out —where I share what’s been on my mind professionally, along with my unique takes on AI and the Future of Health.  

Now onto this week’s issue…

“Have I lived a good day today?”

 “Am I bringing positive change through my actions?”

“Do I still want to continue doing what I’ve been doing all these years?”

 I ask myself these so-called reality-check questions often, hundreds of them.

I feel like it’s important to always stay in the know of where I am and who I am, even if the answers are rough and cold.

I accept that there is no objective truth.

We have two eyes and two ears (if we’re lucky), and those sensors are our only way to assess what’s around us – what’s real.

But since we’re only capable of looking at this world through our own set of eyes, our perception of reality is quite subjective.

Our truth is subjective too. 

We simply can’t know the objective truth because we’re not equipped to gather objective data. 

This thought drives me crazy sometimes. 

Especially when I see what seems like an objective injustice and straightforward craziness to me: like when well-off Western students demand to defund our police while their protests are being guarded by the same people they protest against. 

Or when a Hollywood actor tells me we’ve been lied to: there are no straight lines, he can create a planet using no gravity, and 1 x 1 = 2. 

These things may enrage, summon laughter, or call for serious reckoning, but they sure don’t leave one’s perception of truth idle.

One of my fears in our work at Techery has always been to suddenly realize we’ve been idle for a while without realizing it.

Because I know for a fact, you can’t survive in the capitalistic world if you are not increasing value.

So it becomes existential.

That’s why I regularly perform this “zoom out” exercise (and I highly recommend it to all service providers and IT consultants):

I look at each of our clients and try to honestly answer a question: “Do we still help them move the needle, or are we just comfortably riding along?”

It’s impossible to always be adding value visibly.

Before you put food on the table, you have to buy it raw, clean it, and cook it.  

You’re not technically making your family less hungry while you’re still in the process of preparation.

But you are.

In the software business, sometimes it’s very hard to spot the moment when you stopped adding value in those “preparation moments” that could last for months.

So many consulting companies choose to artificially replace the notion of value they ought to bring with the amount of dollars they receive from their clients.

They start thinking that as long as the invoices are being paid, they are adding value.

This way, they are transferring the responsibility for value-adding to their clients, making them judges of their work.

But as the old saying goes: if you shoot to be second, the leader decides your fate for you.  

I like to keep the fate of Techery under my control as much as I can.

It’s not always 100% possible.

But monitoring your company’s services for customer value is essential, especially when we talk about large multi-year enterprise contracts with numerous moving parts and dozens of chefs in one kitchen.

That’s all for this week…but one more thing. If you’re enjoying this, can you do me a favor and forward it to a friend? Thanks.

-Alex

Want to hear what needle-moving technology ideas we have for your org? Reach out → Techery

Follow me on Twitter/X: @pshenianykov

Connect with me on LinkedIn: Alex Pshenianykov

What else was on my mind last week 👇

NEXT IN AI
Remember LEXX?

Remember that old sci-fi series “LEXX” where an alien prison ship was powered by human brains sucked through tubes into the cold space heart of the vessel?

Well, time to re-watch the show as the Swiss biocomputing startup FinalSpark launched Neuroplatform, the world’s first online system that allows scientists to use living brain cells for computing.

The Neuroplatform uses 16 tiny clumps of human brain cells, called organoids, as mini "bioprocessors.

Biocomputing, though somewhat sci-fi, is notable for potentially using a million times less power than silicon chips, a significant consideration given current AI data center energy concerns.

FUTURE OF HEALTH
Don’t die in the next 5 years

More and more, I find evidence that the future of healthcare will be highly individualized—right down to the cell level. 

A groundbreaking study in Nature Cancer is yet another proof of this trend. 

These incredible scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind computational pipeline named PERCEPTION, which uses artificial intelligence to predict cancer drug responses at a single-cell level. 

As a good friend of mine (who spent over $100K on top-tier exclusive medical events last year) said to me: “Just make sure not to die in the next five years.”

🫠 THIS MADE ME SMILE