Productivity, AI, and the Human Edge
A reflection for modern builders in a world of accelerating automation
In the early 2000s, I watched entire creative teams in media and advertising dissolve—not through layoffs, but through tools.
Photoshop replaced graphic departments. Final Cut replaced video suites. The iPhone replaced the need for studios altogether.
Suddenly, all you needed was an idea and a phone.
The agencies that adapted didn’t just survive—they became dominant.
The ones that clung to old workflows quietly disappeared.
Today, we’re living through that shift again. But this time, it’s not one tool.
It’s thousands.
And it’s not one industry.
It’s every field that touches communication, coordination, content, or decision-making.
If you’re a founder, GTM leader, or creative operator—this isn’t your cue to brace for impact.
It’s your chance to design your advantage.
The End of “Busy Work” Isn’t the End of Work
Across every time zone and every team I advise—from Istanbul to San Francisco to São Paulo—founders are using AI to 10x execution:
Running outbound without SDRs
Creating campaigns without content teams
Writing onboarding flows, landing pages, and sales scripts in a single day
Even mid-market teams are restructuring.
Marketing orgs once built on headcount are now built on leverage.
Revenue teams that relied on static playbooks now adapt weekly—powered by agents trained on live deal history.
For some, this feels unfair. Impersonal.
“That’s not real work,” they say.
But we’ve heard this before.
Scribes resisted the printing press.
Bank tellers panicked over ATMs.
Even software engineers once scoffed at WYSIWYG editors.
What followed?
More output. More reach. More creativity.
Productivity isn’t the enemy. It’s the enabler of value.
Value Isn’t in the Labor—It’s in the Outcome
When was the last time you cared whether your pasta was kneaded by hand?
You didn’t. You cared whether it tasted good.
No one refuses to drive because a machine paved the road.
No one asks for a quill when offered a pen.
The goal is the experience—not the process.
When we deliver more value in less time, with fewer wasted steps, the customer wins.
And so do we.
This isn’t the end of work.
It’s the elimination of unnecessary effort.
AI doesn’t care how long something took. It cares whether it works.
And so should we.
Irony: The Machine Age Trained Us to Be Less Human
There’s a quiet irony here.
For 100 years, industrial systems trained us to be efficient, compliant, and replaceable.
School rewarded memorization.
Jobs rewarded predictability.
Creativity was often treated like a risk.
We were trained to think like machines.
Now that machines actually can think like machines… what’s left for us?
Human work.
The work that involves:
Judgment
Emotion
Storytelling
Trust-building
Taste
Cultural fluency
Ethics
Imagination
These are the traits that shape world-class go-to-market execution.
These are the traits that machines can’t replicate.
When AI Does the Baseline, Humans Create the Breakthrough
When everyone has access to the same tools, the differentiator isn’t what you use.
It’s how you use it.
AI can generate 100 headlines.
But it can’t pick the one that resonates with your audience.
It can draft 50 cold emails.
But it can’t feel when the tone is off.
It can build the landing page.
But it can’t choose the idea that earns trust.
Founders often ask me:
“Will AI replace GTM?”
No.
But it will replace the parts of GTM we should never have been doing manually.
So Here’s the Opportunity
Let AI write the first draft. You do the punch-up.
Let AI map your leads. You build the narrative.
Let AI tag signals. You build the system that turns signals into pipeline.
Use AI for the baseline.
Use yourself for the breakthrough.
The Renaissance After the Disruption
After photography became widespread, portrait painters vanished.
But painting didn’t die.
It evolved.
What became more valuable wasn’t realism—it was soul.
Originality. Taste. Perspective.
We’re entering the same era in GTM.
The baseline is cheap.
The human layer is what earns attention, trust, and purchase.
Your unfair advantage isn’t in efficiency.
It’s in judgment. Taste. Narrative. Relevance. Resonance.
Those aren’t traits AI is close to replicating.
AI Isn’t Taking Your Role. It’s Asking You to Redefine It.
There are two ways this plays out:
You become someone who works for AI—checking boxes, executing tasks, and losing strategic altitude.
Or you become someone who uses AI—an architect, strategist, or builder who scales their insight with superhuman leverage.
One is a race to the bottom.
The other is a leap to strategic advantage.
What Will You Redefine This Month?
This isn’t about “AI is coming.”
It’s already here.
The real question is:
Now that it’s here, how will you choose to matter more?
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