Dylan Uz

What it's really like to go from a 100+ person team to 2 in the AI era.... As you likely know, I stepped down as CEO of Jones Road earlier this year for several reasons. It wasn't one of the main ones, but one reason was that I am super AI pilled and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss this opportunity. I see this as the most important technology in my lifetime, and frankly one I really enjoy playing with. There wasn't enough time to do so as CEO. Here is where I see the state of AI in different company sizes: - The larger the company, the worse they are at AI generally. Enterprise cos are only budgeting $20 a month per employee; so it's hard to get stuff done. They also have much stricter security protocols so adopting or integrating new tools is hard. I'd say these companies are dabbling and much of it is performative. Productivity gains are small here for the most part. - Midsize companies are still slower to adapt. JRB was in this range, but at the lower end of it. These companies have existing tools, workflows, and enough resources to generally not need to lean on AU too much. To them, AI adoption looks like building dashboard, making data analysis much faster, and accessible to more people. The more ambitious of these companies are using it to increase creative velocity and to offload manual tasks. But it can be tricky due to existing tools and workflows. So it's a lot more analysis than creation. Not fully "agentic". - Then you have newer, AI first companies that know nothing else. They don't have people, so there's so existing debt to work around, and enough ignorance and naitive to think things can be done. Winks falls into this camp. Before hiring anyone, we prove to ourselves AI can't do it. Even if AI can't do it fully, it can likely really help. One person in these companies can get A TON done. I am one of them. I went from having 50+ people under me to 1. So if I want to get a lot done, I have no choice but to lean in. Call it the era of the Super Contributor. A few ways I've been able to be a former CEO managing an entire marketing function with AI: - Context and access is everything. The models and agents are only as good as what you give them access to. We use HQ for this. I couldn't imagine a world without it with how many agents we run. - We make use of many different agents and models. I always find it super cringe when people show their agent org charts but it's true. I have a Grokbot Chief of Staff that oversees all my other agents. It runs all project management in Notion. I literally never have to go into Notion and can do a lot of the work with my main COS Grokbot, who can sub work out to other Grokbot agents as well as other agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Runneth, Muse, etc. This sounds like overkill and it might be, but they each have a different strengh. This is only possible because all the agents have the shared context and have knowledge of everything like employees in a company would. - I've learned even AI pilled people need reminders to push what their agents are capable of. For everyone who says AI is not helpful, there are people doing it. They just have trained it more and pushed the boundaries. I uploaded ads for a few weeks manually until I found out Runneth can do it very easily. And it took some time to feel comfortable with it. Video editing is also solved, but don't expect it to be one shotted. - In addition to agent-to-agent comms, I believe humans and agents are going to collaborate much more in the future. For example, Notion is a solid platform that allows for a good UX but it also created markdown for agents to use. - Prompt engineering is dead. I see too many people still focusing on it. Instead, I like to use long-form Wispr flow yapping, with full context, multi-agent review workflows, and verification. Plus being in the loop as little as possible. - Your skills as experts in your field are the most important thing. There are people that can design amazing websites in AI because they are amazing designers without AI. Same with images and videos. It's why I am going back to focusing on learning copywriting and creative strategy almost exclusively. - We are still extremely early. If you feel behind, it's absolutely not too late. I truly believe we're in the first inning. Some will be left behind, but I think this is the best time in history for skilled and ambitious people who are willing to take this on. Your earning potential and career prospects can get taken to new heights if you use AI to leverage your unique expertise and skills. If you'd like to be one of those people, or if half of what I said above was foreign and you'd like to learn more, I have good news. I have teamed up with my friend @jacob_posel and the good folks at @HQForWork to help teach The Super Contributor Method, which is a live 4 week Cohort Based course teaching you how to level up your AI skills and become a super contributor. Spots are going fast and are limited. Sign up here: thesupercontributormethod.co…