Algo Ego with Jason Busch

Nobody dies when a SaaS company overpays for a startup, but the CFO might want to. In this edition of Algo Ego, I put on my hybrid analyst hat and deconstruct Coupa: four acquisitions in twelve months (Cirtuo, Scoutbee, Rossum, and the big one, Tonkean), the Thoma Bravo take-private and the debt sitting underneath it, and a positioning line, "cloud-native agentic trade network," that I don't think...

In this episode of Algo Ego, I go solo for a long-overdue lecture on a thesis I've been building over the past several months: Exact Purchasing. The argument, simply, is that Peter Kralik's 1983 HBR matrix has run procurement for forty years, but it was never the right answer. It was the most procurement could afford to do with the labor it had. AI changes that. I walk through the four qua...

In this episode of Algo Ego, Jason and Lisa take on leadership in the age of AI: not the abstract, Harvard-weekend version, but the real questions facing anyone who manages people, builds teams, or raises kids in a world where unlimited processing power is sitting right next to you. They debate whether AI kills leadership or demands more of it, why the liberal arts may be more relevant now than ev...

Everybody’s talking about AI layoffs. But the real question at our dinner table isn’t who’s losing jobs, it’s what all of this means for our kids. In this episode, I bring the conversation out of our house and onto the mic with the person who knows my blind spots better than anyone: my wife, business partner, and co-conspirator, Lisa Reisman. Together, we wrestle with some uncomfortable questions:...

This week, I’m joined by my long-time sparring partner and business builder, Guy Stafford , to reflect on his 25+ years leading the wildly successful procurement firm, Proxima (acquired by Bain), and how those hard-won lessons apply to the age of AI. Guy pulls back the curtain on Proxima’s creation, from a $35 domain name ( Buy.co.uk ) in the mid-90s to navigating the dot-com crash, before dissect...

In this episode of Algo Ego , I sit down with Sam Kinney to revisit the rise of FreeMarkets and explore how its core ideas translate into today’s world of AI-driven market design. We unpack the creative auction formats that reshaped industrial sourcing, the cultural engine that powered the company’s talent, and how those lessons apply as AI begins to automate negotiation, supplier discovery, and c...

In this episode of Algo Ego, I sit down with Stuart Loren — investor, former lawyer, and one of the sharpest voices on AI-driven economic change. Stuart and I talk about how he shifted from corporate law to institutional investing, and why themes like AI, energy supply, and social disruption now sit at the center of his work. We dig into Jevons’ Paradox and what 19th-century coal demand can teach...

In this episode of Algo Ego, I sit down with Sam Kinney, co-founder of FreeMarkets — the company that pioneered online procurement auctions and transformed how global supply chains operate. Sam and I talk about how FreeMarkets began in the early ’90s — before Java, before Netscape — and how a handful of former McKinsey consultants turned a manual “ballroom auction” into one of the most influential...

In Episode 2 of Algo Ego, we feature Tom Beaty, founder of Insight Sourcing Group and creator of SpendHQ and Witness to War Foundation. Tom shares how he built multiple successful companies at the intersection of procurement, data, and technology—starting from a basement startup to a major acquisition by Accenture. We explore how he turned an internal analytics tool into a thriving SaaS business,...

In Episode 1 of Algo Ego, we feature Bob Solomon, the original business architect of the Ariba Supplier Network. Bob is an expert on networks, marketplaces, and B2B. We trace the history of these models and dive into the origin story of the Ariba Supplier Network, then explore how they’ve since evolved through industry-specific offerings and verticalization post SAP Ariba. From there, we shift the...