Why Data (Not Code) Is Your Only Real AI Moat | Jason Li, Laurel

In this episode, Jason Li, CTO of Laurel, reveals how the company is turning timesheets into the AI playbook for the entire knowledge-work economy. Jason breaks down why $2,000/hour lawyers still spend Saturdays manually filling out time in six-minute increments, how Laurel's AI platform automatically captures every click, email, and meeting, and why data (not code) is the only real moat left in the age of the SaaSpocalypse. Jason shares how Ernst & Young is using Laurel to identify high-leverage work, why Laurel deliberately integrates with "decades-old" software like Classic Outlook that most startups ignore, and the counter-intuitive reason your best rainmakers should never be forced into cookie-cutter roles again. He also explains why Laurel doesn't train its own LLM, how they run AI feedback loops that self-iterate prompts, and the frameworks leaders can use to actually measure AI ROI instead of just surveying "did it help?" Key Topics Covered: Why "what gets measured gets managed" is the most important rule in AI adoption The Moneyball insight that changed how Jason thinks about metrics How Laurel auto-generates timesheets for lawyers and accountants Why Ernst & Young chose Laurel for their tax group The hidden cost of manual timesheets for $2K/hour professionals How Laurel maps knowledge work to a company's "work ontology" Why decades-old software (Classic Outlook) is a competitive moat, not a liability The SaaSpocalypse: what survives when AI eats applications How to measure if an AI tool actually delivers ROI Why data, not models, is the real defensible asset in AI Episode Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:25 - The Peter Drucker quote that shaped Jason's career 02:49 - A Moneyball analogy for AI adoption 03:25 - What Laurel actually does: the AI platform that maps time to outcomes 07:19 - Why every business (not just law firms) needs time visibility 09:17 - Inside the Ernst & Young deployment 12:27 - Jason's journey to becoming CTO at Laurel 14:21 - Live product demo: Laurel's work ontology engine 17:49 - How AI shifts the line between high and low leverage work 21:15 - What onboarding a 2,000-person firm actually looks like 23:06 - The technical architecture behind Laurel's desktop client 28:35 - Why Laurel doesn't train its own LLM 29:39 - How Laurel handles AI models "getting worse" overnight 33:35 - Capturing time for work that doesn't happen on a computer 37:17 - AI adoption meets employee behavior change 41:54 - The SaaSpocalypse and why Laurel's moat is data, not software 48:00 - Why Jason left Ironclad to join Laurel 51:16 - Jason's answer to The AI Why's signature closing question Jason Li's Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhli/ Laurel: https://www.laurel.ai Partner Links Upgrade your AI toolkit: https://www.theaireport.ai/ai-executive-pass Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Join the community: www.theaireport.ai/leaders-launch-guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Pentagon just signed eight AI deals and left Anthropic out. Wall Street is helping both Claude and ChatGPT move deeper into companies. And Elon Musk went from calling Anthropic evil to powering it with his own data center. This week, the Pentagon clears eight major tech companies for classified military AI while Anthropic fights back in court, Anthropic and OpenAI both launch enterprise AI services businesses backed by Wall Street giants, GPT-5.5 Instant becomes ChatGPT's default model with significantly fewer hallucinations, Greg Brockman takes the witness stand in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, and Anthropic signs a deal with SpaceX to use the Colossus 1 data center that Musk built for his own AI company. If you are a founder, operator or executive trying to keep up with AI, this is your weekly news briefing every Tuesday. Stories Covered This Week: The Pentagon signs AI agreements with Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, AWS, SpaceX, Oracle and Reflection while Anthropic fights to stay on the list Anthropic launches a $1.5B enterprise AI services company with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs while OpenAI finalizes a $10B joint venture called The Deployment Co GPT-5.5 Instant is now ChatGPT's default model, making 52.5% fewer errors on high stakes questions Greg Brockman testifies in Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit, revealing tense scenes from the company's early days Anthropic signs a deal with SpaceX to use Colossus 1, the data center Musk built for xAI, with talks of orbital AI infrastructure to follow Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:20 Pentagon signs eight AI deals, Anthropic left out 01:53 Anthropic and OpenAI launch enterprise AI services businesses 03:30 GPT-5.5 Instant becomes ChatGPT's default model 04:53 Greg Brockman testifies in Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit 06:23 Elon Musk goes from calling Anthropic evil to powering Claude 08:10: Outro Partner Links: Upgrade your AI toolkit: https://www.theaireport.ai/ai-executive-pass Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Join the community: www.theaireport.ai/leaders-launch-guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

22,000 LinkedIn followers to over 210,000 in just over a year. Charlie Hills did not get there by luck. He got there by reverse engineering what already works, posting with intention every single day, and building systems with AI that most people have not even heard of yet. In this second appearance on The AI Why, Liam Lawson sits down with Charlie Hills to break down exactly how he goes viral across LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, what his full content creation process looks like with Claude, and why he just launched a SaaS tool built entirely from his own workflows inside Claude Code. Stories Covered This Week: The pre-validated content strategy that got Charlie 11 million views on his first Instagram reel The CHEF framework for creating content that does not sound like AI wrote it How Charlie uses Appify, Claude Code and Gemini together to reverse engineer viral content Why organic reach on LinkedIn is dying and what to do about it Claude Code for infographics, carousels, and eventually video editing from the terminal Vislo, the branded infographic SaaS tool Charlie just launched in public beta Pattern interrupts, B-roll clarity and what actually stops the scroll on Instagram Going from 9 to 5 employee to full time creator in nine months Episode timestamps: 00:00 Intro and follower count update 01:03 How Charlie goes viral on any platform 04:01 Steal Like an Artist and pre-validated content 04:53 What structure works on Instagram reels 07:36 Speaking coach, scripting and sounding human 09:06 The full LinkedIn content creation process 10:03 Posting cadence and why twice a day backfired 12:19 The CHEF framework explained 15:07 Appify, Claude Code and scraping for content research 17:04 Claude Co-Work scheduled tasks and workflows 20:22 Going deep into Claude Code for infographics 22:06 How Claude Code memory and the MD file works 24:41 Combining Gemini API inside Claude Code for Instagram scripts 26:53 Where AI ends and humans begin in the content process 30:36 Remotion and the future of AI video editing 33:33 Over-engineering with AI and why it is addictive 35:02 The story behind Vislo, the branded infographic SaaS 40:22 Beta feedback and pricing 42:01 Done For You vs SaaS customers 43:57 Expanding beyond LinkedIn to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube 47:12 What the ideal future of work looks like for Charlie 49:12 The Mexico LinkedIn creator house with Mischa and Corey 53:03 University, failed business and the nine month grind 01:00:01 Did not leave the nine to five to earn more, but to live more 01:00:55 Why do you do what you do? Partner Links Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Join the community: www.theaireport.ai/leaders-launch-guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthropic just passed OpenAI in revenue for the first time ever. Google signed a classified Pentagon deal and then invested $40 billion in the company it competes with. And OpenAI just put an expiry date on every custom GPT. This week, Google locks in a classified defense agreement as Anthropic gets cut out, Google commits $40 billion to its biggest AI rival, Meta posts its fastest growth since 2021 but still watches its stock fall, OpenAI shuts down custom GPTs in favour of autonomous Workspace Agents, and Anthropic overtakes OpenAI in annualized revenue at $30 billion. If you are a founder, operator or executive trying to keep up with AI, this is your weekly five-minute briefing every Tuesday. Stories Covered This Week: Google signs a classified Pentagon agreement giving access to Gemini for sensitive defense work as Anthropic gets cut out Google announces plans to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic despite competing directly with Claude Meta reports $56.3 billion in Q1 revenue, up 33% year over year, but stock falls 7% on AI spending concerns OpenAI introduces Workspace Agents and deprecates custom GPTs for business accounts by August 2026 Anthropic's annualized revenue hits $30 billion, passing OpenAI for the first time Episode timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:20 Google signs classified Pentagon deal 01:10 Google invests $40 billion in Anthropic 02:00 Meta beats earnings but stock falls 02:50 OpenAI replaces custom GPTs with Workspace Agents 03:40 Anthropic passes OpenAI in revenue 04:30 Outro Partner Links Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Join the community: www.theaireport.ai/leaders-launch-guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monday.com has 225,000 customers and over 60,000 seats at some of its largest accounts. So when its co-founder says the company completely changed its vision, that is worth paying attention to. In this episode, Liam Lawson sits down with Roy Mann, co-founder of Monday.com, to talk about the three waves of AI, why managing work is no longer the goal, and how Monday is now betting everything on agents actually doing the work instead. Roy also breaks down Agent Talent, the marketplace where companies can hire AI agents like employees, why Monday opened its platform to agents as first class citizens, and what adaptability really means when technology is moving this fast. Stories Covered This Week: The three waves of AI and why wave three changes everything Why Monday changed its core vision from managing work to doing the work Agent Talent: hiring AI agents like employees with real job postings and qualifications Selling to agents, not just humans, and what that marketing looks like The SaaS apocalypse and whether the per seat model is actually dead OpenClaw, open source AI, and why Roy thinks this is a democratic technology The future of work, abundance vs scarcity, and why adaptability is the only skill that matters Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:45 The three waves of AI 03:42 Customer reception to agents 07:16 The developer who went from terrified to empowered 10:33 What personality traits succeed in the agent economy 12:16 Monday's internal AI infrastructure 19:44 Agent Talent and selling to agents 24:50 How to sell to an agent 27:37 Testing and qualifying agents with Sensei 30:22 Why open source matters 32:22 The future of work 36:44 Is the per seat model dead? 39:51 OpenClaw and local models 44:04 Paperclip and multi-agent orchestration 52:09 Roy's ideal future of work 56:42 Betting everything on agents with Monday stock down 76% 01:00:00 Where Monday's adaptability comes from 01:01:43 Why do you do what you do? Partner Links Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Free AI Tool Stack: https://community.theaireport.ai/checkout/the-ai-report-welcome-gift?coupon_code=WRTH Join the community: www.theaireport.ai/leaders-launch-guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The AI model that was too dangerous to release just got breached. Anthropic entered the design software market. And OpenAI dropped its biggest model yet, just six weeks after the last one. This week, the NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite the Pentagon blacklisting the company, Claude Design takes on Figma and sends its stock down 7%, Yelp transforms into an agentic consumer app, Mythos gets accessed by an unauthorized Discord group, and OpenAI fires back with GPT-5.5. If you are a founder, operator, or executive trying to keep up with AI, this is your weekly five-minute briefing every Tuesday. Stories Covered This Week: NSA uses Anthropic's Mythos Preview despite the Pentagon declaring the company a supply chain risk Anthropic launches Claude Design, a prompt-to-prototype design tool that sent Figma stock down 7% Yelp's upgraded AI assistant can now book restaurants, doctors, and more in one conversation Anthropic investigates unauthorized access to Mythos through a third-party vendor environment OpenAI releases GPT-5.5, scoring 88.7% on SWE-bench with a 60% drop in hallucinations vs GPT-5.4 Episode Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:20 NSA uses Anthropic's Mythos despite Pentagon blacklist 01:10 Anthropic launches Claude Design 02:00 Yelp's AI assistant goes full service 02:50 Anthropic investigates Mythos breach 03:40 OpenAI drops GPT-5.5 04:30 Outro Partner Links Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Join the community: www.theaireport.ai/leaders-launch-guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two years ago, Mischa Collins was let go from her marketing manager role at a startup. After months of applying to jobs she was overqualified for and hearing nothing back, she decided to stop playing the victim and take control. She posted about her journey on LinkedIn. It went viral. Then she posted again. That went even more viral. From just two posts, she signed three clients and launched her career as a full-time LinkedIn creator. Today, Mischa has grown to over 50K followers in just 18 months, runs a ghostwriting agency, coaches founders on personal branding, and is currently living in a "LinkedIn Influencer House" in Mexico with business partners Corey Blumenfeld and Charlie Hills. In this conversation with Liam, she breaks down exactly what's working on LinkedIn right now, why the algorithm has shifted more in the past month than in her entire time posting, and the specific content formats (infographics and cheat sheets) that are massively outperforming everything else. She also shares the real numbers behind her content: how a single post with a text overlay hit 80,000 impressions while the same post without one got just 5,000. Key Topics Covered How getting fired became the best thing that ever happened to her career Going from fashion to tech sales to full-time LinkedIn creator The 2 LinkedIn posts that went viral and signed her first 3 clients Growing from 0 to 50K LinkedIn followers in 18 months Why the LinkedIn algorithm has shifted more in the past month than ever before Dwell time: the metric that matters most on LinkedIn right now Infographics vs lifestyle images: 80K impressions vs 5K from the same creator How to run a ghostwriting agency and what clients actually need Brand partnerships on LinkedIn: what makes a good campaign vs a bad one Platform dependence: why relying on one social platform is risky The "LinkedIn Influencer House" in Mexico with Corey Blumenfeld and Charlie Hills Building a personal brand while staying authentic Why rock bottom is the best place to build from Episode Timestamps 00:01 - Introduction and the LinkedIn Influencer House in Mexico 02:01 - Origin story: fashion to tech sales to LinkedIn 03:33 - How LinkedIn content landed her marketing manager role 05:02 - Getting let go and the two months of rejection 05:49 - The viral LinkedIn post that launched her solo career 08:00 - Growing to 50K followers: what worked 15:07 - What's working on LinkedIn right now (algorithm shift) 16:36 - The 80K vs 5K impressions experiment 17:41 - AI's impact on LinkedIn content creation 22:00 - Building a ghostwriting agency 27:00 - Niche vs expanding your content topics 31:55 - Platform dependence and branching to Instagram/TikTok 36:00 - The creator economy on LinkedIn 40:00 - Revenue streams: brand deals, coaching, ghostwriting, cohorts 47:03 - Breaking down her income sources 50:00 - Helping brands run better LinkedIn creator campaigns 55:00 - The future of personal branding 01:00:00 - Building a life on your own terms 01:10:34 - Why you don't need to stay in your lane 01:11:06 - Where to find Mischa Mischa's Socials: LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mischacollins/ Instagram — @mischabuildsbrands Partner Links Book Enterprise Training — https://www.upscaile.com/ Subscribe to our free newsletter — https://www.theaireport.ai/subscribe Get free AI resources: https://community.theaireport.ai/checkout/the-ai-report-welcome-gift?coupon_code=WRTH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

$852 billion. That's what OpenAI is now worth, and its own investors are starting to question if that math adds up. This week, Anthropic's new model takes the coding crown from GPT-5.4, OpenAI's backers get cold feet, Snap cuts 1,000 jobs and points the finger at AI, twelve tech giants team up to secure the internet, and Nvidia writes a $5 billion check to its oldest rival. If you're a founder, operator, or executive trying to keep up with AI, this is your weekly five-minute briefing every Tuesday. Stories Covered This Week: Claude Opus 4.7 hits 87.6% on SWE-bench Verified, beating GPT-5.4 and Gemini 3.1 Pro on coding OpenAI's $852B valuation faces scrutiny as Anthropic's revenue triples to $30B in one quarter Snap lays off 1,000 people (16% of staff), citing AI writing 65% of its code Anthropic launches Project Glasswing with Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and 7 others Nvidia invests $5B in Intel, co-developing x86 chips built for its AI stack Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:31 Claude Opus 4.7 takes the coding crown 01:26 OpenAI investors get cold feet 02:18 Snap cuts 1,000 jobs, blames AI 02:56 Project Glasswing: Securing the world’s critical software 03:49 NVIDIA invests 5 billion into Intel 04:41 Outro Partner Links Book Enterprise Training: https://www.upscaile.com/ Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://www.theaireport.ai/subscribe Free AI Tool Stack: https://community.theaireport.ai/checkout/the-ai-report-welcome-gift?coupon_code=WRTH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy, host of over 2,500 founder interviews, and creator of The Next New Thing, reveals why the most exciting business opportunity in AI right now isn't building another chatbot or SaaS tool. It's building for AI agents as customers. Andrew shares how one founder went from $3K to $70K/month by simply pivoting his social media tool to serve AI agents instead of humans, why Jason Fried at Basecamp is now adding agent-first features, and what this means for every entrepreneur and operator watching the AI wave. Andrew breaks down his own AI tech stack (Claude Code, VS Code, Atlas Browser, OpenClaw), why he keeps a separate laptop just for AI agent work, and the brutal honesty about how much time we're all spending "playing" with AI vs. actually building revenue-generating products. He and Liam go deep on the "SaaSpocalypse" debate, whether intelligence becoming a utility makes audience and distribution the only real moats, and why the agent-to-agent economy, where software sells to other software, might be the biggest shift since mobile. Key Topics Covered How Andrew built a $30M/year email newsletter business in his 20s and what he learned about monetization The origin story of Zapier: Andrew was their first paying customer before they even had a product Why AI's "shiny object syndrome" is the biggest trap for builders right now Andrew's daily AI tech stack: Claude Code, VS Code, Atlas Browser, Claude Desktop, and WhisperFlow How Postiz went from $3K to $70K/month by becoming the social media tool for AI agents The agent-to-agent economy: why your next best customer might not be human Is SaaS dead? Andrew's nuanced take after 2,500+ founder interviews Why audience and platform stickiness are the only real moats when intelligence becomes a utility Liam's Claude automation workflows: auto-generating guest research, marketing assets in 5 minutes Vibe video editing and the future of AI-powered content production Episode Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction and welcome 00:28 - Andrew's background: building a $30M email newsletter empire 02:00 - Selling the business in his mid-20s and traveling the world 06:19 - Starting Mixergy and doing 2,500+ founder interviews 09:39 - The founders Andrew admires most: Wade Foster and Zapier's origin story 12:07 - How solving problems for free changes your career 12:51 - AI's shiny object syndrome: building for fun vs. solving real problems 14:36 - Andrew's mission: helping AI builders find real revenue 17:45 - Andrew's AI tech stack: VS Code, Claude Code, Atlas Browser, WhisperFlow 22:32 - The ideal future of work with AI agents 24:31 - What's most impressive and most underwhelming about AI right now 25:20 - Building a social listening tool with AI 27:08 - The SaaSpocalypse debate: can you vibe-code your own tools? 36:12 - Postiz: from $3K to $70K/month by selling to AI agents 38:17 - The agent-to-agent marketplace future 40:06 - Liam's Claude automation: auto-generating guest research briefs 43:19 - Real-time AI workflows with WhisperFlow and Claude 48:02 - Why investing time in AI compounds exponentially 50:05 - Creating marketing assets in 5 minutes with Claude 51:27 - Vibe video editing: the next frontier for content creators 53:42 - Thought experiment: what's defensible when intelligence is a utility? 55:39 - The bread maker analogy: why SaaS won't actually die 58:01 - What makes software defensible: switching costs and stickiness 01:00:47 - Postiz deep-dive: the agentic social media scheduling tool 01:03:26 - Agent-first businesses: newsletters, chat apps, and tools built for agents 01:08:51 - Where to find Andrew and closing thoughts Andrew's Socials: LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewwarner/ Website — https://thenextnewthing.ai Partner Links Book Enterprise Training — https://www.upscaile.com/ Subscribe to our free newsletter — https://www.theaireport.ai/subscribe Get free AI resources: https://community.theaireport.ai/checkout/the-ai-report-welcome-gift?coupon_code=WRTH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

$1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO, Meta's closed-source Muse Spark, Anthropic's restricted Claude Mythos, OpenAI's four-day work week proposal, and Google's open-source Gemma 4. This week, the biggest companies in AI are making very different bets on power, access, and what happens next. AI News in 5 is your fast, no-fluff weekly AI news roundup for founders, operators, and executives who need to stay current. Every Tuesday, in 5 minutes. Stories Covered This Week: Meta launches Muse Spark, its first closed-source AI model under Alexandr Wang's $14B deal Anthropic restricts Claude Mythos to 50 partners via Project Glasswing over cybersecurity concerns OpenAI publishes 13-page policy calling for 32-hour work weeks and a "robot tax" SpaceX files for $1.75T IPO after $1.25T merger with xAI to build orbital data centers Google releases Gemma 4, open-source models running on a single laptop Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:25 Meta launches Muse Spark, goes closed-source 01:15 Anthropic holds back Claude Mythos over hacking risks 02:10 OpenAI proposes four-day work week and robot tax 03:05 SpaceX files for $1.75 trillion IPO 03:55 Google releases Gemma 4 open-source 04:45 Outro Partner Links Book Enterprise Training: https://www.upscaile.com/ Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://www.theaireport.ai/subscribe Free AI Tool Stack: https://community.theaireport.ai/checkout/the-ai-report-welcome-gift?coupon_code=WRTH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices