Commit & Push

Damien Filiatrault talks with Justin Gelinas, Chief Business Officer at TAHO Labs, about the hidden inefficiencies driving up the cost and energy demands of AI infrastructure. They explore how better workload distribution, improved hardware utilization, and more efficient compute could help companies get more from existing resources while unlocking new opportunities for AI and software development.

Eric Ries joins Damian Filiatrault to discuss the evolution of startup thinking from The Lean Startup to his new book, Incorruptible. The conversation explores how founders can test ideas ethically, why growth is not the same as validated learning, and how companies often lose trust when short-term financial pressure takes over. Eric also explains why governance, mission, and ownership structure matter much earlier than most founders think—and how builders can create organizations that are not only successful, but worth protecting.

Damien Filiatrault talks with Micah Johnson, co-founder of Biggest Goal, about what AI agents actually are, how they differ from basic chatbots, and where they can create real value for businesses today. The episode covers practical use cases like data analysis, internal knowledge retrieval through RAG, and event-driven automations, along with why tools like N8N and Raggy have made agentic workflows much more accessible. It also looks at why so many AI projects fall short: not because the technology is weak, but because companies often adopt it without the systems, training, and strategy needed to make it work.

In this episode, host Damien Filiatrault talks with Kevin Williams, founder of Ascend AI, about what “agentic commerce” actually means as shopping and discovery start shifting into ChatGPT- and Gemini-style interfaces. They break down the path from today’s LLM-assisted recommendations to “zero-click” transactions that happen entirely inside an AI chat, without users ever visiting a traditional checkout flow. Kevin explains why brands are seeing meaningful declines in organic traffic, why being discoverable now requires a mix of AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization), and how those strategies extend beyond your website into reviews, sentiment, and the broader web. They also dig into the messy reality of emerging standards (product feeds, schema, and competing protocols) and what builders may actually need to implement to make products legible and purchasable by agents. If you’re building for e-commerce, marketing, or the next web experience, this episode offers a practical look at what’s changing, what’s still unsettled, and how to prepare before “zero-click” becomes the default.

In this episode, host Damien Filiatrault talks with Brit Myers, VP of Engineering at System Initiative, about rethinking infrastructure automation for a world of legacy systems, real-time fixes, and AI collaboration. They explore why traditional Terraform and GitOps assumptions break down in practice, how System Initiative’s “digital twin” model keeps intent, state, and change tightly coupled, and why simulations matter before anything touches production. Brit explains how programmable TypeScript functions and change sets make it safer to work with AI agents—letting them propose and iterate on infrastructure changes without handing over full control. If you’re navigating cloud complexity, drift, or experimenting with AI in DevOps, this episode offers a grounded look at how teams can move faster with more confidence and a lot less “merge and pray.”