2025 Year-End CEO Letter

By: Erik Goins CEO of Flywheel Studio

🧠 Message from the CEO

Most teams felt the shift in 2025, it was unavoidable. In this piece, Erik reflects on how AI adoption and go-to-market strategy moved from “nice to have” to non-negotiable, what Flywheel learned by evolving its processes, and why 2026 is about turning strong products into sustainable businesses.

Stepping Into 2026 with Intention

By Temi Olatunji | Product Manager at Flywheel Studio

🧭 From the Product Team

2025 reminded us that speed without clarity is expensive. This article looks back on the product lessons that shaped our work last year. From resisting premature decisions to embedding QA earlier in discovery, this article outlines the principles shaping how we build with more intention, focus, and confidence in 2026.

Moving Design Conversations Beyond Opinions

By Maro De Guzman | Lead UX/UI Designer at Flywheel Studio

🎨 From the Design Team

Design reviews often stall when feedback turns into opinion. This piece explores how shifting conversations toward outcomes, user context, and documented decisions helps teams align faster, reduce rework, and treat design as a shared problem-solving process rather than a subjective debate.

Building a Real-Time Flutter App for ML-Powered IoT Devices

By Marco Restifo Pecorella| Developer at Flywheel Studio

⚙️ From the Development Team

What happens when tiny devices can think, and your app can listen in real time? This deep dive walks through building an ML-powered IoT system, from on-device inference to Bluetooth communication and a responsive Flutter interface, showing how modern tooling makes real-time experiences feel effortles.

📚What We’re Reading:

🚀 Critical n8n Vulnerability Exposes Automation Workflows

A newly disclosed flaw in n8n (CVSS 9.9) allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on exposed servers. The takeaway: self-hosted automation tools are powerful, but without tight security controls, they can quickly become attack surfaces—especially as teams automate more core business logic.

🎫 Salesforce Acquires Qualified to Push AI Deeper into Service Teams

With its acquisition of Qualified, Salesforce is doubling down on AI-driven engagement across sales and service. This move signals a broader shift: CRMs are no longer just systems of record—they’re becoming autonomous operators inside revenue teams.

🎨 Meta Acquires Manus, the AI Startup Everyone’s Been Watching

Meta has acquired Manus, a fast-rising AI startup known for agent-native workflows. The acquisition underscores Big Tech’s urgency to lock in talent and IP as agentic AI moves from hype to infrastructure