Dear Decision Maker,

A quick warning before you read on: this one's different.

I usually use this space to pull apart a problem set. A place, a group, a person most people aren't watching closely enough.

Not today. Today I want to talk about us. About where Grey Dynamics is, where it's going, and some changes coming over the next couple of months. Some of them are big.

There's a lot going on right now. A lot with Grey Dynamics. And there's my new venture, Critical Outcomes Group, which I'll talk about properly another time.

So forgive me if this reads a little more personal than usual. I think it's important to talk about this stuff out loud.

Where this started

When I started Grey Dynamics almost nine years ago, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do. Distil it down and it was this:

Solve very difficult problems. The ones most people don't think are worth their time.

• Too costly.
• Too difficult.
• Too risky.

That's exactly where I saw an edge. I could take on the risk and deliver in a way that simply wasn't possible for others. And that meant not going wide. It meant specialising in something that gave us an edge.

I had a partner back then and we were gung-ho about it. We had every idea you can imagine: technology, OSINT, machine learning, large language models, back when that was a much smaller conversation than it is now. We built a couple of prototypes with friends.

And then clients kept telling me the same thing.

The first time someone sat me down and said that, I listened. The second time I heard it, I knew. I had to go back to basics.

Build a network. Execute our client work through people. Through ground truth.

That's been the mantra ever since. And without bragging, I'll tell you: we're really good at it. We're really, really good at it.

We get access to places that are hard to reach even for people with much bigger budgets and a lot more experience than us.

We grew for three reasons:

1. We focused on a difficult problem.
2. We did it through ground truth.
3. We saw the world for what it actually is: not black or white, but shades of grey.

Which, by the way, is where the name comes from. Grey Dynamics has two meanings:

• The dynamics — the movements, the interplay inside that grey space. The terrestrial side.
• The grey matter — your brain. The cognitive space. Part of the philosophy from day one, even if it rarely gets talked about.

We set out with those two focal points and started writing. Reports and articles about difficult problems, difficult places, difficult people, difficult organisations.

That's why Grey Dynamics became what it is. That's how we grew, and how we stayed relevant.

The scaling problem nobody warns you about

Somewhere along the way, the question became: how do you scale a company that is inherently human?

• Do you hire more people? There's a finite number who can do this work, and they're expensive.
• Do you build bigger networks? Transnational ones? Networks of networks?
• Do you plug other people's networks into your own and build one big trusted ecosystem feeding you ground truth?

I'll be honest with you. After almost a decade of doing this, I don't think it's feasible. I don't think this work is inherently scalable. It just isn't.

But for a long time my mindset was different.

Private equity, venture capital, all of that. I said it without really understanding what it meant. How much due diligence it takes.

How much scrutiny. Anyone who's ever sold a company will tell you it's one of the hardest things you can do, and not just emotionally.

So I tried to build scalability into our other units instead. Training, the online writing, the subscriptions.

Training works. We built online programmes anyone in the world can take at their own pace, in their own time. Niche, but genuinely scalable.

The subscriptions were different. I never seriously tried to scale them; they were something we did for fun. The online writing got out of hand and started costing us real money to maintain, so we set up a subscription. Then enterprise clients started asking for it, so we changed the pricing.

And here's the part I have to own.

I've got friends at McKinsey, so I say this with love. But we conformed. We tried to fit in. And that goes against the entire ethos of the grey space, against the ethos of Grey Dynamics.

• We lost touch with the interesting, quirky, underreported stuff we used to chase.
• I think it alienated a big part of our audience.
• It put distance between me and our own content.

Financially, it doesn't really work either, not unless you're trying to sell. And I don't like pushing things. If you can't see why you need what we do, I don't want to cold-call you into buying a subscription.

Maybe, deep down, I'm not sure I'd have paid for what it became. It had drifted towards corporate and enterprise, away from what I actually love.

What the early years felt like

In the first three or four years, in the trenches, it was different.

When analysts and interns asked me what our editorial line was, I'd tell them: whatever I think is interesting and cool. That was it. I know how vague that sounds.

More than 150 people have come through our doors over the years. In the beginning I'd pick the topics.

Then the moment an analyst understood why I was choosing what I was choosing, they'd start bringing me topics that were interesting to them, but that they knew I'd love too.

That's how we built a genuinely cohesive editorial line. I'm incredibly proud of it.

Ask ten people why they know Grey Dynamics and most won't point to our client-facing work. They'll point to something we wrote. Something that resonated.

I don't feel we're doing that anymore. So I've made some decisions.

What's changing

These won't all happen overnight. They'll roll out over the next couple of months. The team involved in our editorial work already knows, so none of this is a surprise to them.

The writing. Revamping how we write the articles, the reports, and how we show up on social. Back to the topics that align with who we actually are. More obscure, more interesting, more quirky.

The podcast. Changing the format and the type of podcast we do. I'm going to put far more time and effort into it than I have been, and I owe a real apology there. A lot of you have stuck with us and I haven't given it the attention it deserves. My sincerest apologies. I'll do better.

The subscription. This one changes completely: we're removing the paywall.

• It won't happen overnight, and every subscriber will get an email about it.
• If you currently pay for a subscription, that's ending. You'll stop being charged.
• By the time the paywall comes down, you'll already have stopped paying.
• On a longer plan with months left? I'll refund every remaining month in full.

Enterprise reporting. We'll keep producing specific reporting for enterprise clients, but not on the website. It'll live on a separate platform, delivered directly to them and built around what they need.

Offline customers. Nothing changes for you. Same reporting, same quality. If anything, we're leaning in harder on the offline side.

And we are absolutely going to keep publishing. More content, not less. A lot more tied to what we actually teach, with free examples, because I don't think we give enough away.

A note on the courses: I know they aren't cheap. I understand that, and I empathise. But I'm not going to apologise for the pricing. We have the best instructors in the game, and that's what the best costs. We tried to strike a balance between quality and access.

The timeline:

• Most of this lands in the next two months or so.
• Changes within the team: I'll talk about those when things are clearer, probably end of July into August.

To the team: thank you. I'm proud to work with some of the most brilliant people in this field. I've always said we produce the best analysts outside of government, and I stand by it. To the ones who still follow and still read: you know who you are. I salute you and I respect you.

What we actually stand for

We're going to keep writing about the obscure, the interesting, the quirky.

In a world where a lot of people have lost trust in the establishment and the big known brands, it's the independent, smaller outfits that have filled the gap. By niching down. By offering a different perspective, sometimes political, sometimes not.

I've always tried to keep Grey Dynamics apolitical. But humans are political, so it creeps in. I won't apologise for our perspective, and I don't want to control what you think or how you vote. That's yours.

I've never talked about my own politics and I don't see why I should. I think it's irrelevant. What I'd rather talk about is values.

The things we stand for:

• Freedom of speech, religion, movement. Freedom, generally.
• Transparency and privacy.
• Security.
• Staying curious.
• Compassion, because I don't believe in being completely neutral.

As analysts, we're asked to look at a problem set as it is, not as we wish it to be. That's 100% true. But seeing it clearly doesn't mean we strip out the compassion behind it.

One question for you: should we do merch?

I'm putting a poll up on the newsletter and on our social. The question is simple.

I've been asked, no exaggeration, a hundred times. I never thought about it seriously. I've spoken to other organisations who do it really well. And in the spirit of leaning into the things I'm actually excited about, I think we should.

But I want to hear from you first.

If you made it this far

Thank you. Really. Hopefully this gives you a bit of the backstory: how Grey Dynamics came to be, what the philosophy was, and what it's going to be again.

I'll write more about the team and the people and the changes in the emails to come. If you want to talk about any of this, or collaborate on something I've mentioned, reach out. I had so many fantastic replies to the last newsletter and I read every one.

Two quick asks:

• Tell me what you think of this kind of newsletter. More narrative? More of the strange and difficult corners of the world?
• Vote in the merch poll.

It genuinely guides where we go next.

Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

Ahmed
CEO Grey Dynamics
​Where headlines end, ground truth begins

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