One operator. A portfolio of companies. A field manual.

Vlad Podoliako runs Belkins, Folderly, LinguaLive, NoCancer AI, 404 Model Agency, and a newsletter read by 10,000+ operators. Based in the UK. Advisor, mentor, investor.

This book is the field manual he wishes someone had handed him in 2024 — the one that explains how to actually operate AI instead of just chat with it. Thirty-nine chapters. One operator. Belkins, Folderly, the Newsletter, and a portfolio of others. No fluff. Real numbers. Receipts.

Where to follow Vlad

• vladsnewsletter.com — operator playbooks, weekly
• vladyslavpodoliako.com — long-form thinking
• linkedin.com/in/chiefdata
• Spotify (AI-native music side project)

About this artifact

The interactive site you're reading was built by a swarm of agents in parallel — content migration, widget builds, design system, deploy pipeline, all of it. The book teaches the technique; the artifact is the technique. Source on GitHub.

It's not a one-off. Across the portfolio the same pattern is now the default: reports, decks, and data go out as interactive docs on a private repo with a live link — not dead files attached to an email. The link stays current because the repo does. Information retention and circulation went up the week we stopped sending PDFs. This site is just the most public instance of a habit the whole company now runs.

Edition 9.3, May 2026

The stack moves. The discipline doesn't. Each edition rewrites the half of the tier list that drifted. Subscribe to the newsletter to be told when the next one lands.