How Do You Hire Differently When AI Flipped the 80/20 Rule? | Dub

**Steven Wang** (0:00)
It really forces people to grapple and spend time within that final 20% of work, which is what AI cannot do. It's the human taste, the human creativity that I expect first out of you, and then inspect after if needed. I just think now, because of AI, naturally every net new hire is really now just focused on the non-AI work.

**Jen Holmstrom** (0:23)
What does it take to build a company culture where AI doesn't replace human connection? It deepens it.
Steven Wang dropped out of Harvard at 19 to build Dubb, the first regulated copy trading platform in the US. After selling a VR company as a teenager and working at Apple, Steven raised $47 million to democratize investing. The app has been downloaded over 1.5 million times. As part of our limited series on talent and AI, we explore how leaders are building teams for an AI-driven world.
Hi, everybody. I'm Jen Holmstrom and I'm here with Christina Pasanen, our VP of Talents at Notable Capital. Today, we are very excited to be joined by Steven Wang, the founder and CEO of Dubb. We're excited to dive into how other builders can approach talent and culture in the age of AI, because things are rapidly evolving. Steven, thank you so much for being here today and for joining us.

**Steven Wang** (1:18)
Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure.

**Jen Holmstrom** (1:21)
In the era of AI, and you are what I would term an AI-first company, really.
But how is it shaping your company culture, especially around experimentation, speed, continuous learning? How is that incorporated into what you do in the everyday?

**Steven Wang** (1:40)
Yeah. I think one of the most unique aspects of integrating AI into company culture, I think a lot of founders and CEOs don't talk about that much, is the personal side of AI. I even do this personally every day, but we have a lot of difficult personality relationships as you work with coworkers, as your fires come up, and there's a lot of difficult conversations that you need to have on a day-to-day basis at the company.
I think in the past, it's pretty hard to practice. How do you have some of those difficult conversations? What are the right ways to talk about and start and give difficult feedback? But now, I think that's been actually drastically easier because of AI.
One is Void chat mode, but you can also just search pretty quickly, what is the best way to say this to someone else? I think that's actually really improved relationships across the rest of the team, where people now have a better toolkit to go communicate better. I even use that in my personal life. Every time I'm giving a one-on-one or a performance review, I'll put my notes, grapple with it a little bit with AI, practice a little bit, and it just comes out that much better. I think what's so powerful about AI is not just the acceleration of the workflow and doing a lot of the mundane things much faster. I think it really drives clarity and speed to understanding what is the final outcome that you're getting to. And it really forces people to grapple and spend time within that final 20% of work, which is what AI cannot do. It's the human taste, the human creativity.

**Jen Holmstrom** (3:07)
I love the line that you're drawing between AI and human relationships and also human creativity. How do you maintain human connection and creativity in organizations where more work is AI mediated? Maybe just double click a little bit on that.

**Steven Wang** (3:23)
I'd actually love to flip that question. Where I think because of the presence of AI and accelerating all the mundane work that we do spend a lot of time on in the past, but it's not enjoyable work, but it's like the grunt work that you get to get fun.

**Jen Holmstrom** (3:35)
The repeatable work flows.

**Steven Wang** (3:36)
Yeah. That gives us just so much more time to actually focus on collaboration. For example, going to the meeting and we've got this giant products back.
It might take a long time to sit down and go through that one by one, 30 minutes advance, but you can just pop into AI. You get a really quick succinct summary. You're going in armed with a lot more context quickly and with the right and most salient points for you to be effective during that conversation. So we've actually seen just AI speed our workflows and really allow our team in our own person culture, the forest even more so as we're just spending more time together. I think the quality of time is something that really matters. We're a team that I religiously want to make sure that all of our meetings are effective across the board. I think a lot of companies say that.