Renato Valdés-Olmos

• The unit of work changed first

  I had AI's effect on companies wrong for eighteen months, and the advice I give founders has flipped. On team shape, the density of work, and being late together with everyone else.

  AI1 September 2026~5 min

• When the growth stops

  A freeze is announced on a Monday, and by Wednesday you find out what your organization was made of. What goes first, why scope is the only currency left, and the year afterwards when nothing is wrong and nothing moves.

  Organization25 August 2026~7 min

• The function is subordinate to the business

  Every design leader I've watched fail did so the same way: by believing the function they led was the point. The case for accepting subordination, and what it buys you.

  Leadership18 August 2026~7 min

• What a performance review is actually for

  Development, ranking and money are three different jobs, and running them through one document ruins all three. What happens in calibration, and the one rule worth more than the rest of it.

  Management11 August 2026~7 min

• The mandate inverts

  I joined Pitch to grow an organization, and the plan survived exactly one board meeting. What you owe a team when the job you were hired for stops existing, and why ambiguity costs more than the constraint does.

  Operating4 August 2026~6 min

• Events nobody trained you for

  A design team split between San Francisco and Kyiv, and no training that applied. Why the plan is worthless in week one, how care gets expressed in logistics, and where the line is.

  Leadership28 July 2026~7 min

• The 1:1 is not a status meeting

  If you can get it from a dashboard, don't spend thirty minutes of someone's week getting it from their face. What you're actually monitoring, and the failure I keep repeating.

  Management21 July 2026~6 min

• The studio is the diligence

  Noord is a fund and a studio, which sounds like two businesses and is one instrument. What three weeks of paid work tells you that a pitch meeting cannot, and the conflict of interest in doing it.

  Venture14 July 2026~7 min

• Against the take-home assignment

  The design assignment measures discretionary time and calls it ability. What replaced it, what a portfolio stopped telling you, and the cost of the thing I am recommending instead.

  Interviewing7 July 2026~9 min

• What reference calls taught me about hiring

  More hours on reference calls than portfolio reviews. Four questions that actually move, what the calls kept telling me, and the obligation that makes them work.

  Hiring30 June 2026~7 min

• Operating, then allocating

  Three things a history of running teams lets you see in a pitch, three ways it makes you worse at the job, and why recruiting is the only part of the standard investor value list that carries weight.

  Venture23 June 2026~7 min

• Design is founder work

  Most of a company's design is decided in its first eighteen months by people who would not call themselves designers. Which decisions those are, why the first design hire rarely fixes it, and what I look for now.

  Founders16 June 2026~6 min

• Meet them where they are

  Most mentorship fails in a slow decay of calendar invites, until both people are relieved it stopped. Five things that work, and the three reasons it decays anyway.

  Mentorship2 June 2026~6 min

• Cut the team to seven

  Lyft's flagship project was stuck with twenty people in the room, and nothing was missing except a decision. On judgment density, and staffing flagships like founding teams.

  Teams12 May 2026~4 min

• Seeding Amsterdam, twelve years on

  In 2014 I was a founder and fairly rude about Dutch investors. I now run a fund here. Marking my own homework on what I got right and what I got badly wrong.

  Venture29 April 2026~6 min

• Joy, comfort, grace

  What it does to your practice when the people you build for are nothing like you. Volunteer caregiving shifts, the landline decision, and the case against designing down.

  Craft24 March 2026~6 min

• The number next to it

  A recruiter told me my CV described leadership rather than outcomes. Not all design work is attributable, and treating it as though it were produces both the vague version and the dishonest one.

  Outcomes20 March 2026~7 min

• The other Renato

  My father and I share a name, an institute, and, it turns out, a question. On nuclear medicine, invisible pathways, and building an archive I control this time.

  Memoir17 March 2026~3 min

• Operator

  I went looking for a photograph of the first time I landed in California, and couldn't get into the account that had it. On waves, the clock you adopt without noticing, and what a record of a life is worth.

  Memoir9 February 2026~7 min

© 2026 Renato Valdés-Olmos