What strategy keeps you competitive as AI changes?

Aidan Smith

Co-Flapper · Flapping Airplanes

Focus on idea generation

Aidan Smith says his comparative advantage is idea generation, explaining that using AI models means taking advantage of where they are superhuman and then deploying and scaling them.

The answer starts at 15:46.

Eric Ries

Chair, LTSE Services · Long-Term Stock Exchange

Ask AI to teach you

Eric Ries says that if you use AI tools, you should not ask them to do the work for you but instead ask them to teach you how to do the work, since they are capable of teaching anything and are good at it.

Dan Martell

Founder & CEO · Martell Ventures

2-day AI hackathon training

Dan Martell says he shut his company down for two days to teach everyone to use Claude Code and become technical enough to solve problems with AI, focusing on creating value that gave them time back.

Mike Cannon-Brookes

CEO and Co-Founder · Atlassian

Intelligent model routing

Mike Cannon-Brookes says intelligent model routing on a per-task basis, to optimize cost, is the practice—calling technological cost management a core strength of a great technology company.

The answer starts at 26:58.

Micha Kaufman

Founder & CEO · Fiverr

Learn to be a maker

Micha Kaufman says he needs to learn how to be a maker himself in this new reality, because otherwise he'll be out of a job.

Karri Saarinen

CEO, Cofounder · Linear

Take breaks from AI news

Karri Saarinen says he took a break this summer from following AI news, models, and techniques, and found on returning that not much had changed and making great products is still hard.

Timnit Gebru

Founder & Executive Director · The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)

Make space, ignore noise

Timnit Gebru says she actively makes space for and builds the kinds of models she thinks should be built, and sometimes ignores the noise, because paying attention to online AI talk makes deep work hard and debunking is tiresome.

The answer starts at 28:04.

Steven Kotler

Executive Director · Flow Research Collective

Synthesize data, trust intuition

Steven Kotler says the mindset that matters most is being able to synthesize data and information very quickly and to develop a strong intuitive sense that is sensitive toward humans.

The answer starts at 0:34.

Ethan Evans

Founder, Career Expert and Teacher, Newsletter Author · Level Up Leadership

Showcase human skills

Ethan Evans says the answer is not to run faster but to change the game: identify the experience, judgment, and human skills that make you hard to replace, then turn those strengths into visible value.

Amjad Masad

CEO · Replit

Generate new ideas quickly

Amjad Masad says being very generative—generating new ideas and trying them out quickly—is important, because ideas remain a human domain and AI tools like ChatGPT repeat themselves and are bad at it.

Arvind Jain

Founder and CEO · Glean

Focus on the 10% niche

Arvind Jain says he focuses on the 10% niche, reasoning that model companies won’t be able to meet even 10% of all the market’s needs.

Andrew Ng

Founder · Deeplearning.Ai

Build fast, talk to customers

Andrew Ng encourages people to build fast and talk to customers, because the cost of building has plummeted, shifting the challenge to deciding what to build.

Sam Altman

Chief Executive Officer · OpenAI

Release and iterate

Sam Altman says his strategy is to put models out into the world and get feedback from real users, seeing where they break, because that is how you build a good and safe product.

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Pratyus Patnaik

Co-Founder & CEO · Natoma

Optimize token consumption

Pratyus Patnaik says to optimize token consumption by using older models for simple or repetitive tasks and macros for deterministic work, because token spend directly correlates with business value.

Bret Taylor

Co-Founder · Sierra

Reskill and learn new trades

Bret Taylor says it will be an imperative to reskill and learn new trades, arguing that whoever learns new tools first—like an accountant learning Excel—becomes the most important person in the department.

Shaun Modi

CEO · Capitol

One-week release cycles

Shaun Modi says his team is on one-week release cycles right now.

Antoine Bisson

CEO & Co-Founder · Poka Inc.

Hybrid approach

Antoine Bisson says it needs to be a hybrid approach: buy proven solutions that cannot hallucinate and bind AI to specific actions, so users get confidence alongside powerful no-code AI tools.

Alfred Wahlforss

CEO & Co-Founder · Listen Labs

Spend time with AI tools

Alfred Wahlforss recommends spending a lot of time with AI tools—research, coding, ad creative, video—to become fully AI native, because that allows sharper questions, stronger recommendations, and better storytelling.

Jason Calacanis

Bestie · All-In Podcast

Personal AI agents for all

Jason Calacanis says everyone at his firm now has a personal AI agent and nobody has an executive assistant, and that his firm built its own harness and multiplexes between models after Hermes ran into catastrophic memory loss.