Product Faculty

If you think you're late to AI, here's Zapier CEO Wade Foster’s advice for you:
Start building.

Open Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or any coding agent and connect it to your real work tools!

Then ask one simple question for every task:
“Can I do this with the agent first?”
Even if it fails, try.

Because AI fluency does not come from watching demos.
It comes from repetition.

Then once a week, ask your agent:
“Review everything I did this week. What tools, automations, or workflows should I build next?”

He said if you do this for just 15 minutes a week, within 1–2 months you’ll be ahead of most of your peers.

Most CXOs are still treating AI like a strategy topic.

The best ones are treating it like a daily operating system.

Zapier’s CEO made his Chief People Officer responsible for AI transformation.

But not because AI is an HR problem.
Because once almost everyone at Zapier was using AI, the bottleneck changed.

It was no longer: “How do we get people to use AI?”
It became:
“How do we redesign the company around AI?”
Which workflows should change?
Which roles need to evolve?
Which handoffs should disappear?
Where should AI enter the loop?
And where should humans come out of the loop?

That’s the part most companies miss.
AI transformation is not just tool adoption.
It is a company redesign.

If your employees aren’t using AI, this is probably the reason:
They’re not all lazy.
They’re not all resistant.
They’re blocked.

Zapier’s CEO said when they pushed AI across the company, the people struggling usually fell into two buckets.

Some people simply didn’t know where to start.
They needed examples.
They needed encouragement.
They needed someone to show them how AI fits into their actual workflow.

But then there was a smaller group that was just dogmatically against AI.
And for them, Zapier was clear: This is who we are now.
If you want to work here, you need to embrace this way of working.
That’s the real lesson.
AI adoption needs support first.

But eventually, it also needs standards.
Because if AI is becoming the new way work gets done… then using it can’t stay optional forever.

Stop measuring AI by token usage.
That’s the wrong metric.

Replit’s VP of Operations said the real question is not:
“How much AI did our team use?”

It’s:
“Did AI actually improve the business outcome?”
Because AI can make one part of the process faster… while making the overall system just as slow.
AI writes more code?

Now code review becomes the bottleneck.
AI writes more docs?

Now decision-making becomes the bottleneck.
AI answers more support tickets?

Now quality control becomes the bottleneck.
That’s why token usage is a weak success metric.
It shows activity.
Not impact.

The real test is whether AI helped the team ship better work, serve customers faster, or improve the metric the business actually cares about.

Because using AI more doesn’t mean the company is becoming AI-native.
Getting better outcomes does.

By 2028, you won’t need a full software engineering team to build serious products.
That’s what Replit’s VP of Operations believes.
And the scary part?
He says it’s already starting to happen.
AI agents are making it possible to build whatever you want:

Frontends.
Backends.
Internal tools.
Dashboards.
Workflows.
Even early business systems.
Not everything will disappear.
You’ll still need real expertise for security, architecture, and complex systems.
But the old belief that only full dev teams can build production-grade software?
That’s crumbling.
AI is not just helping developers code faster.
It’s turning more people into software creators.

Replit’s VP of Operations just revealed how they interview candidates in the AI era.

And it’s not just:
“Walk me through your resume.”
Now they ask:
What AI tools are you using?
What agents have you built?
Can you show me a demo?
How do you know it actually works?

And the best question:
“How is your role going to change in the next 12 months because of AI?”

There’s no perfect answer.
But they want to see if you’re actually thinking about the future of your work.
Some interviews are still “no AI allowed” to test raw skills.

But others are the opposite:
Open Replit.
Open Cursor.
Use any tool.
Now show us how you work.

For one growth marketing role, they even asked candidates to build a demo agent.
That’s the new bar.
Companies are no longer hiring people who can talk about AI.

They’re hiring people who can turn their expertise into agentic workflows.

“Vibe coding” is the one AI buzzword .it ’s VP of Operations would ban from meetings.
Why?

Because it makes the shift sound too small.
It sounds like someone is casually prompting a front-end demo.
But at Replit, teams are using AI to build much more than that: Internal tools, backend systems, sales workflows, HR platforms, dashboards with live data, entire business processes, etc.
Jon’s point was simple: This is not just “vibe coding” anymore.
It’s turning ideas, missions, and workflows into real software.

And when every team can build the tools they need…
The future of work changes completely.

The difference matters more than most people think.

Not all shopping is about efficiency. Some of it is emotional, personal, and meaningful, and building automation without understanding that distinction is how brands lose customers.

Watch the full episode (link in bio)

Shopify just launched something wild 🔥

You can now simulate AI buyers before real customers ever visit your store.
Not analytics.
Not surveys.

Actual AI-generated shoppers that:
→ browse your store
→ compare products
→ react to layouts
→ simulate buying behavior

Before you launch anything.
This is called “Sim Gym.”
And honestly, this might completely change ecommerce experimentation forever.

Full conversation with Shopify’s VP Product on Product Faculty’s AI CXO podcast.

Why do you enjoy buying some things, but just want others delivered to your door?

“Every role in every company will change.”
That’s what Shopify’s VP Product said on Product Faculty’s AI CXO podcast.

But his take on AI was way smarter than: “AI will replace everyone.”
He said repetitive, task-heavy work?
Yeah. A lot of that gets automated.

But creativity, judgment, taste, and decision-making become MORE important.
The analogy was brilliant: The printing press didn’t kill writers. It killed mechanical copying.
Scribes became authors.

That’s what AI is doing to work right now.
The people who survive won’t be the ones protecting old workflows.

They’ll be the ones using AI to operate at a completely different level.

Full conversation on Product Faculty’s AI CXO podcast.