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Ep 111: Building and Managing AI Agents to Shape the Future of Work with Jacob Bank

Ep 111: Building and Managing AI Agents to Shape the Future of Work with Jacob Bank

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 Bob Pulver sits down with Jacob Bank, Co-founder and CEO of Relay.app, whose career arc — from Stanford's Multi-Agent Systems Lab to founding Timeful (acquired by Google in 2015) to leading Gmail and Google Calendar product teams — represents one of the most continuous threads in AI agent development. Jacob frames AI agents not as software to configure, but as employees to hire, coach, and manage, arguing that great people managers are naturally suited to the AI era. He maps out a three-tier AI stack everyone should adopt and explores how knowledge work will be restructured, why AI literacy is non-negotiable, and how small businesses can now compete at scales once unimaginable. Keywords Jacob Bank, Relay.app, AI agents, agentic workflows, autonomous workers, workflow automation, small business, AI literacy, people management, Timeful, Google Calendar, Gmail, knowledge work, G&A, go-to-market, responsible AI, human-in-the-loop, SaaS evolution Takeaways The right mental model for AI agents is employee management: give them a job description, set expectations, provide feedback, and apply the same code of conduct as any team member Everyone needs three AI tools: a chatbot for conversation, a copilot for real-time task delegation, and an autonomous agent platform for proactive, repeatable work Relay runs on 9 humans and ~60 AI agents — and Jacob sees a path to serving 100x more customers with roughly the same team size AI levels the playing field for small businesses, enabling work at a scale previously only achievable by much larger organizations Jacob's three-level delegation progression: tasks you already do, tasks you're capable of but never have time for, and tasks you'd otherwise hire an expert for AI literacy is not optional — it's becoming a baseline requirement for effective work, equivalent to basic computer literacy Quotes "We're all managers now — that is the skill set we need." "If you have a job that is just to write the blog post about X, that job is not going to exist anymore." "It's not optional. This is going to be a requirement of being an effective worker in the future." "Whenever I have an AI agent doing a classification task, I always ask the AI to explain its rationale — because then you can correct it for next time." "At some point you'll cross this tipping point where you don't have to tell yourself to go use AI — it'll suck you in." Chapters 00:02 Welcome and introductions 00:56 Jacob's origin story and agent-oriented programming 02:54 From Timeful to Google 04:41 Pre-LLM AI features in Gmail and Calendar 06:15 AI coworkers vs. productivity tool nudges 07:39 Early agent research and org disruption 09:24 Restructuring knowledge work 11:45 Evolving human roles and AI literacy 13:32 The social complexity of scheduling 15:16 Credentialed jobs at risk 17:24 AI leveling the playing field for small business 18:17 Inside Relay — 9 humans and 60 agents 19:41 The three-tier AI stack 22:38 Relay as intelligent workflow automation 23:42 SaaS selection in the agent era 26:47 Platform consolidation and SaaS business models 28:13 Deploying agents across G&A, GTM, and R&D 33:16 Agent collaboration and human oversight 34:21 When to build vs. buy 37:56 Three levels of AI delegation 39:50 Scaling AI readiness across organizations 42:22 Responsible AI and the employee management lens 44:14 Evaluating agents vs. testing software 45:51 The blast radius problem 48:09 Bias, coachability, and correcting agents 49:29 Closing advice — go one step further 50:45 What's next for Relay Jacob Bank: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobbank https://relay.app For advisory work and marketing inquiries: Bob Pulver:⁠⁠ ⁠https://linkedin.com/in/bobpulver⁠⁠⁠ Elevate Your AIQ:⁠⁠ ⁠https://elevateyouraiq.com⁠⁠⁠Substack: ⁠https://elevateyouraiq.substack.com⁠
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