Mike Mudrey

Entrepreneur & executive.
Building companies at The 601 Group.
Leading at World 50.
Focused on governance, scale and durability.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

We built a corporate bookings playbook for experiential venue operators. The exact outreach system we're running live right now. Free if you want it, $197 if you want the full version with templates and tracking. https://t.co/1xaZdyACPV

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

Detroit impressions:

• The downtown is full of beautiful buildings. All of them seem to have been built specifically in the 1920s. I guess that is after the city had accumulated enough auto wealth but before the twin hits of Modernism and the Depression. (I hadn't known that the GM Renaissance Center, built as a revitalization project, was at the time the largest private development in US history, and also at the time the world's tallest hotel. It may be large, but it is not pretty.) The downtown is surprisingly depopulated -- both the streets and the sidewalks feel empty. That said, it didn't feel at all unsafe. There are lots of great homes in the suburbs.

• The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation is amazing, and it's worth visiting Detroit for it alone. Among many (many) other things, it contains the oldest known surviving steam engine in the world, the actual Montgomery bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a deconstructed Model T, a deconstructed Eames Chair, and many great cars, agricultural equipment, locomotives, industrial specimens, and more. (They have the Lincoln Continental that JFK was riding in when assassinated -- which, apparently, was returned to service and used by several subsequent presidents.)

• The museum made me wonder why American car design peaked in the mid-60s. (This fact is very evident at the museum.) The LLMs blame the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. (Not quite https://t.co/ox5TEECH6N, but close.)

• Good food exists but it is hard to find.

• The Heidelberg Project also exists and is unique.

• We stayed at the Dearborn Inn, which is wonderful, and contains cottages modeled after the homes of significant American figures. Dearborn (and Hamtramck) are now predominantly Muslim, apparently for reasons that go back a century to Henry Ford's $5 wage. Dearborn felt noticeably prosperous (we stopped for coffee at a fancy Japanese cheesecake cafe); Hamtramck did not.

• https://t.co/OOkCI7DbAz says that the Hispanic population of Michigan is just 6%. Coming from California, the absence is very striking.

• The Detroit Institute of Arts is remarkable, particularly the room with the American landscapes and the section with the Dutch masters (especially The Visitation). An obvious question is why there is nothing quite like it in the Bay Area given how much richer the latter is than Detroit ever was -- we techies are just so uncultured by comparison. The Diego Rivera murals are amazing (and quite strange; you can see why they were controversial).

• Detroit is full of historic plaques -- they are truly everywhere. This is presumably due in part to the fact that Detroit has a lot of history, but it still has many more than places with comparable historical depth. Some research suggests that it might be related to generous tax credits for historic preservation. Whether or not that is true, Detroit persuades me that other places should engage in more plaquemaxxing.

• I recommend a visit! You overall leave with some sense for how exciting America must have felt in the early 20th century.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

Both Sides launches today. A weekly newsletter about what the boardroom misses about building — and what builders miss about the boardroom.

Issue 1: The More Connected We Become. On what technology accelerates, and what it cannot replace.

https://t.co/z4p9HwY8Q1

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

@therobdale Well… I’ve seen it twice in the past month. Most recently last week and from everyone I talked to around me. It had been pretty much every week for them.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

@DTWeetin Having to go all the way around the airport, back to the Green lot or the big blue deck and then waiting for horrible shuttle service is not really a 2026 model. Take a look at ATL and other larger airports.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

@DTWeetin Great. But not really that helpful considering the parking lot is completely full and closed 90% of the time… including short term. Perhaps a more long-term solution to the actual problem would be helpful?

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

AI is making me better at the parts of my work that should be efficient. Which means I have more capacity for the parts that shouldn't be. That's the trade that actually matters.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

Just launched Both Sides, a newsletter about what the boardroom misses about building and what builders miss about the boardroom. 13 years in Fortune 500 peer groups. Now building my own small companies. The gap between those two worlds is the whole thing.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

We sent 68 cold emails to corporate HR directors over 6 weeks. Zero replies. So we threw out the approach and started over. The problem wasn't the list. It was that we were asking before we were giving. Rebuilding the whole thing.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

I run 4 hospitality locations and work a full-time job. The question I get: how do you do both? The honest answer: I don't do either perfectly. But I've learned that most operational problems are actually unmade decisions sitting in someone's inbox.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

The opportunity is not to build a business that competes with technology on its terms. It is to build one around everything it cannot replace. That's the bet I'm making.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

As technology accelerates, the most valuable things are not the ones it improves. They are the ones it cannot replicate. A thread on what this means for anyone building something right now.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

Food is one of the few universal experiences that consistently brings people together in a physical space. When you layer in participation — people not just consuming but creating — it shifts from a transaction to a memory.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

On playing the infinite game (reflections while on the beach):

https://t.co/XzMQvcmKT6

[Sarvesh Shrivastava @bloggersarvesh]

https://t.co/HwUTBm4AUD

[Chris Vannini @ChrisVannini]

When Adam Nightingale took over, MSU hockey had 10 straight losing seasons, no conference titles in 21 years. He's now won three straight B1G titles in four years as coach.

[Mike Mudrey @MikeMudrey]

@Spartans_Illo I would prefer to keep Illinois on the 4 and MSU/Nebraska 2&3