Four great reads for 5/1/2025

Engineering fluency, AI reality checks, scope-creep cures, and a fresh take on the VC “regatta.”

Top 5 Things Marketers Should Know About Engineering (Justin)
Good GTM leaders translate both ways. Justin lists five tech basics—data models, deploy flows, internal no-code tools, infra 101, and technical SEO—and reminds us that product & marketing execs must advocate for engineering’s realities to the rest of the org. (link)

Wharton Blueprint for Effective AI Chatbots (Thomas McKinlay)
McKinlay—author of the “Science Says” marketing series—teams with Wharton to turn 100+ peer-reviewed findings into chatbot do’s & don’ts. Perfect reading while every GTM team races to bolt AI onto the funnel. (link)

AI Side Effect: Human Scope Creep (Jim Morris)
Give ChatGPT a simple idea, and you’ll get a 10-second spec—then watch you bloat it. Morris shows how AI accelerates ideation so fast that we skip MVP discipline, turning specs into Franken-products. Experience it for yourself next time you’re vibe coding. And remember that product sense and real user validation should still gate what ships. (link)

A Response to Sam Lessin’s 2025 Update (Gil Dibner)
I’d been meaning to reflect on Lessin’s “VC factory is dead” post—glad Gil beat me to it. He calls today’s funding game a messy “regatta,” agrees AI commoditizes plain-vanilla SaaS, and tempers the “software is worthless” hot-take. For context, here’s Lessin’s original. (link)