CEO Must Act as Chief Product Officer

The "IC CEO" Model for Leading in the AI Era

Howie Liu, CEO of Airtable, describes a fundamental shift in how leaders need to operate in the AI era - becoming more hands-on and detail-oriented rather than purely delegating. This approach, which he calls the "IC CEO" (Individual Contributor CEO), is essential for companies navigating the rapid changes brought by AI.

Core Principles of the IC CEO Model

• Leaders must get back into the details and become builders again, especially during paradigm shifts

  • "As we started the company I was very much in this mode right I was literally writing code both on the back end thinking about the real time data architecture of our platform also the front end the UX"
  • The CEO needs to function as a "chief taste maker" who understands the product at a deep level
  • This is particularly crucial during major technology shifts like AI

• Every software product must be "refounded" in the AI era

  • "Every certainly every software product in my opinion has to be refounded because AI is such a paradigm shift"
  • Leaders should ask: "If you were literally founding a new company from scratch with the same mission how would you execute on that mission using a fully AI native approach?"
  • Evaluate whether your existing assets give you an advantage or if you'd be better starting fresh

• Leaders must personally use AI tools extensively

  • "I'm proud to say I'm pretty sure I'm still the number one most expensive in inference cost user of Airtable AI"
  • CEOs should use AI tools hourly, not just daily
  • This hands-on usage helps leaders understand what's possible and develop product intuition

• Reorganize for speed and experimentation

  • Create a "fast thinking" team focused on shipping AI capabilities weekly
  • Maintain a separate "slow thinking" team for more deliberate, infrastructure-focused work
  • Reduce standing meetings and shift to more timely, urgent topic-driven interactions

• Encourage extensive experimentation across the organization

  • "If you wanna cancel all your meetings for like a day or for an entire week and just go play around with every AI product that you think could be relevant to Airtable go do it"
  • Value "play" as a learning mechanism - exploring with curiosity rather than just checking boxes
  • Share experiments openly to normalize this behavior

How to Develop Teams for the AI Era

• Break down role silos and develop versatile team members

  • "If you're a designer who can be just technical enough to kind of be dangerous... you can actually design a concept or even prototype a concept that's much more interesting"
  • PMs need to become "hybrid PM prototypers who have good design sensibilities"
  • Engineers should understand product and business requirements

• Focus on outcomes rather than process

  • Move from rigid roadmaps to experimentation-driven development
  • Prioritize shipping to learn rather than perfecting before release
  • "It's not like oh well we have like this separate kind of roadmap for enterprise we have this roadmap for this group"

• Shift from incremental improvements to holistic reinvention

  • "The best way to innovate on the product is not incrementally split over all these different little service areas but actually to have a bigger kind of more step function vision"
  • Coordinate dramatic changes across wider surface areas
  • Think about missions and outcome goals rather than feature improvements

• Start with vibes, then move to evals

  • For novel product experiences, begin with open-ended experimentation
  • "You should actually not start with evals and you should start with vibes"
  • Only formalize evaluation frameworks after you've identified promising directions

• Leverage AI to collapse dependencies between roles

  • Enable team members to do more independently with AI assistance
  • "Everybody needs to become more full stack"
  • This creates a startup-like environment where people focus on outcomes rather than role boundaries