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Hi, it's Alex Wittenberg and this is The AI CFO, your biweekly briefing on the tools, trends, and real-world lessons shaping startup finance in the age of AI.
This week's newsletter explores how company leaders should be thinking about adapting their org charts to make space for AI agents. I've spent the past few months neck deep in Claude Cowork, and we're working to 'onboard' a team of agents to support our team.
The essay below covers the tactics we're using, and the content roundup zooms out with a few predictions on how these changes will impact organizations more broadly. Let's dive in!
đź’ˇ Five Steps for Turning Claude Cowork into a Star Employee
Lately on Funded, more and more founders I talk to are building AI agents to do work that used to require a traditional hire. And there's a pattern in how they describe their products. They reach for hiring language. Training. Onboarding. Ramp time.
It got me thinking about how I've been approaching Claude Cowork, and how much of what's worked looks less like software adoption and more like onboarding a new employee. Here are the five moves that made the biggest difference. Read the full essay on LinkedIn →
đź«€ The Ecosystem Pulse
(Podcast) What jobs are AI jobs? — Another Podcast (Benedict Evans)
Benedict Evans takes on the question everyone in finance is asking: which jobs will actually survive AI? What stuck with me is that jobs like elevator attendants went to zero, but accountants have grown through every wave of automation. That's because it's a scope-expansion profession. Every time the repetitive work disappears, finance leaders expand into work that used to be out of reach.
(Essay) From Hierarchy to Intelligence — Jack Dorsey & Roelof Botha (Block)
Jack Dorsey and Roelof Botha argue that organizational hierarchy only exists because humans were the only way to move information through a company. AI is changing that. Most firms are using AI to do existing work faster. Block is asking what work should look like when AI is doing it entirely. We've been asking the same question at airCFO, with one difference: we think the answer still has humans in it.
🤝 airCFO Content Connection
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LinkedIn: The Radioactive Gatorade Problem
AI has some dark patterns if you're not careful. I've been noticing a few of them in myself and with the airCFO team lately. If you've felt like AI is sometimes working against you, here are the ways it might be doing that (and how to catch it). Check out the post.
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LinkedIn: Spreadsheets vs. AI
Will AI kill the spreadsheet or give it a second life? I laid out how I see it playing out, including the framework I've been using to figure out which of our spreadsheets should actually be apps. If you run a finance team and haven't thought through this yet, give it a read and let me know what you think.
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That's all for this edition of The AI CFO - we'll be back in your inbox soon with more musings on the future of AI-powered finance & operations. Please reply to this email directly with any feedback/suggestions/just to say hi!
Cheers,
Alex Wittenberg, CEO @ airCFO
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