Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)

0:00Or it was very easy to always say well I will never be able to do this because insert skill issue.

0:05We're realizing that even if you have the skills at your fingertips, the thing that matters is agency.

0:11I don't think agency is very evenly distributed in the world.

0:14Yep, a piece of advice for someone that wants to develop this within themselves.

0:18I tell this to myself, if you drive Notion like it's stolen, one day you wake up and you realize the world is made up by people no smarter than you.

0:25It just really awakens you to the idea that you can just change things.

0:28You think about your job a couple years ago?

0:30What's most changed?

0:32The first 10% of every project are now free.

0:34It takes almost no effort to now build the first version of a startup.

0:39Pace comes up a lot now.

0:40Pace actually means you're able to run a virtual machine in your head where given an idea, you can predict for a certain in-group whether they're going to like it or not.

0:49You just have to do reps.

0:50It's almost like training a model.

0:51What do you think matters to building a successful product?

0:54All the great products have something tiny that is a superpower.

0:57One tiny core that is so exceptionally good.