This week gave Charles Savage, our CEO, a bit of space. A wedding, some time to think, and a few ideas that stayed with him longer than expected.
The Savage Take is where he shares what he’s seeing and thinking each week, in markets and beyond.
Jack Dorsey and Sequoia's Roel of Botha published an essay this week that stopped me cold. Not because it was new. Because it put words to something I have been feeling for months.
The argument starts two thousand years ago. The Roman Army built the first org chart. Eight soldiers to a tent. Ten tents to a century. A rigid chain of command built around one simple human constraint.
A leader can manage only so many people.
That constraint never changed. It became middle management. It became the corporation.
AI breaks it. Not by making the hierarchy faster. By replacing what the hierarchy does.
AI removes the need for coordination in the way we have always understood it. Dorsey is not layering tools on top of Block. He has already reduced parts of the workforce and then explained the thinking afterwards. The market understood it immediately.
Three roles remain. Individual contributors who own deep technical layers. Directly responsible individuals who own outcomes. Player-coaches who build and develop at the same time.
The system coordinates everything else.
This puts to words our greatest opportunities and challenges in the months and years ahead. It resonates with our call for speed, data, intelligence and autonomy.
Read it and you will find yourself polarised. Between a view that protects your current self-worth, and the freedom to compound it exponentially.
Only one response really matters: What you do next.
Not an April Fool's joke. Yes, I checked.
Reports circulated this week of a $122 billion funding round for OpenAI, implying a valuation north of $800 billion.
Whether every number holds or not, the direction is unmistakable.
They are generating billions in revenue at a pace faster than any platform we have seen before.
OpenAI's own framing: the capital being deployed today is building the infrastructure layer for intelligence itself.
Read that sentence again.
Dorsey is rebuilding Block as an intelligence. OpenAI is building the intelligence layer for the world.
The direction is the same.
The only question is where you stand relative to it.
I posted something this week that has been sitting with me.
Framing what you think versus what you do is a superpower. One I wish I had started younger.
Most people read the Dorsey essay and feel the threat. Jobs gone. Hierarchies collapsing.
That is one frame.
The other frame is that the intelligence layer creates a new edge. And the people at that edge, the ones who sense what the model cannot—intuition, judgment, trust, the feeling in a room—are exactly where the value moves next.
Same input. Two completely different outcomes.
You get to choose your frame.
That is the superpower.
Purple Group gave me a certificate this week. Twenty-five years. My name, in cursive.
Most people treat time like it is infinite and money like it is scarce.
It is the other way around.
Time is your greatest asset. Give it where you find purpose, shared values and a culture that compounds. Invest it in a life worth living.
Stay long enough and you stop asking if it is worth it.
It just is.
I could not have drawn a straight line to here twenty-five years ago. What I knew was the direction.
You do not need to see the whole road.
You need to know which way you are walking.
Two of the team hit 20 years this week too. Tristan, a Swiss army knife you would take to war. Melanie, the multi-tool for every occasion.
Three of us. Different roads. Same direction.
Still here.
Still Savage.
The wedding was this weekend. Three days. A game for younger bones than mine. Well played to all.
It was for Rup and Cay, part of the Purple Group family, and it felt like a reminder of how much of this journey is shared.
It was magical for every reason. The place. The people. The passion of it all.
It reminded me to find pause more often. To give space for people to surprise you. And to dance.
Not just when the music plays your song.
But more importantly when it does not.
On the flight down I was listening to Prof G Markets. A divorce attorney talking about marriage. Sharp, funny, and this:
Every marriage ends in death or divorce. And I hope yours ends in death.
That is a weird thing to say to a human being. But I hope it does.
I hope what you say to each other at the end is: this person helped me become the most authentic version of myself. And they are still my favourite person.
That is my wish for Rup and Cay.
And for anyone reading this lucky enough to have found their person.
Friendships too.
They are not maintained. They are built. Continuously. Leaning in, giving, sometimes taking, and choosing the other person again and again and again.
Time compounds everything.
Including the people who matter most.
Congratulations Rup and Cay.
They are the same story right now.
The Iran conflict is the market.
Everything else is noise around it.
Last week was a rollercoaster with no clean landing. Oil surged. Then pulled back. Markets sold off. Then recovered.
And then the narrative shifted again.
Deadlines have moved. Proposals are on the table. Public positions have not shifted much.
But the conversations continue.
The S&P 500 has shown resilience through volatility. Oil remains the signal. Every move tied to headlines, statements, and expectations.
Iran wants a permanent end to the conflict.
The US wants Hormuz open first.
Those two positions have not moved.
But both sides are still talking.
That matters.
This week: Purple Group HY 2026 results and what to watch next
We publish results on April 8.
Six months goes fast. That is the discipline of public markets.
A short pause to reflect, review, reconsider.
Engage and share the stories of the catch, and the ones that got away.
"We'll pack more gaffs next time."
Wednesday.
Come hungry.
Three things landed this week that belong together.
Dorsey said the hierarchy is over.
OpenAI is raising unprecedented capital to build what comes next.
And a divorce attorney reminded me that the best relationships end in death, not divorce, because someone helped you become the most authentic version of yourself.
Put together, they point in the same direction.
Intelligence is replacing coordination at work.
Capital will follow the people who adapt fastest.
The question is what replaces it in life.
The answer is the same thing it has always been.
People who choose to show up.
Who lean in when it is easier not to.
Who stay long enough for it to compound.
In markets.
In business.
In friendship.
In marriage.
April 8. Results day. The next signal. Big week.
The world is not waiting.
What you do next is the only thing that matters.
Stay Savage,
Charles
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