Alex Lauderbaugh

Auckland · CPO at BettrData · Building Syscribe

Alex Lauderbaugh

Product leader · Builder · Auckland

Product leader and builder. Currently CPO at BettrData and building Syscribe, an AI-powered documentation platform. Based in Auckland — mostly writing about product, systems, and what I'm reading.

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Latest

Aug 31, 2026 · Ship · Verdict

Breaking the Musical Ouroboros

One of the problems with Spotify's Discover Weekly is that it oversamples on songs I've listened to before, many (most?) of which Discover Weekly suggested in the first place. This musical ouroboros ends up producing an extremely narrow set of recommendations, which is antithetical to what I actually want from it—variety across genres. Critics have already solved this problem, and Pitchfork, Paste, and NPR's New Music publish well-reviewed albums every week. What doesn't exist is a good cross-publication playlist connecting those albums to their songs. So I built one over a weekend. The interesting work was iterating on the heuristic that picks which tracks best represent a well-reviewed album, which I've written up on the project page.

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Building

Syscribe

Building · Software

AI-powered documentation that auto-generates from PR diffs and ships when humans approve. In-flight and iterating.

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Recently read

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    Based on how many references to books I've read and loved, it seemed almost inevitable that I would find Crossings by Ben Goldfarb engaging and compelling. And with such fantastic phrases as "the ungulate panopticon," it was a delightful read as well, despite the often dire messages of the book.

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  • The Phoenix ProjectGene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
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    Reading other reviews of this book, I was struck by several reviews stating that the novel was the wrong format for what is, effectively, a technical management book. I disagree with that perspective. The novel allows the reader to see the human impact of those situations and decisions because people matter.

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  • A World AppearsMichael Pollan
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    While I enjoyed the nature of this book (survey-style books that explore a thorny question are some of my favorites), Pollan brushes by a major tension that's extremely relevant today: can AI truly be conscious? He states several times that the answer to that question is "no" or at least "not any time soon," but does so in a way that feels a bit disingenuous to a book otherwise intentionally critical of most theories.

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