Kristen Arnold

HubSpot has 2,200 AI tools running inside their company. 97% were built by employees who'd never touched AI before. Here's what they figured out that most businesses miss.

Last week I was at HubSpot for a talk with the Mass AI Coalition. A HubSpot engineer named Zev said something that gave me another frame for how I think about AI adoption.

"Agents are just software."

Not magic. Not something you need a computer science degree to figure out. Just software.

But here's the part that matters if you run a team:

HubSpot adds about 155 new AI tools every week. And again, 97% of those tools were built by regular product teams. Not the AI team. Real employees that built their core products and had never built AI tools before.

How? They made it easy. Engineers didn't have to learn anything new. They learned how to adapt what they were already doing. Two lines added to systems they were using every day. That's it. The barrier was so low that people just started doing it on their own.

This is where most businesses get stuck.

They roll out AI like it's a big special project. New tools. New workflows. New systems to learn. And then adoption stalls because it feels like one more thing on top of everything else.

The companies getting real adoption are doing the opposite. They're putting AI inside the tools and workflows the team already uses so nobody has to learn a whole new way of working.

The other thing Zev said that stuck with me: keep it simple. One AI agent. One job. One clear outcome. The moment you start connecting too many pieces together without clear ownership, things break and things get messy.

That's not just an AI problem. That's the same thing I see in every business I walk into. When nobody owns the handoff, everything stalls. Doesn't matter if it's people or software doing the work.

**AI doesn't fix ex*****on. It exposes it.**

AI adoption fails because nobody decided who owns what, what good output looks like, or who gets to say "this is done." That's Founder Dependency showing up in a new outfit. The fix isn't a better tool. It's Ex*****on Architecture, the structure underneath that lets the team lead with confidence while the founder stays in their zone of genius.

Same problem we've always had. Just moving faster now.

If you want to see where your team actually stands on AI readiness before you roll out one more tool, the free AI Readiness Scorecard tells you in about 5 minutes: kristenarnold.co/ready

Your operations manager is avoiding the AI conversation.

They don't know what "AI-forward" work is supposed to look like, so they stay quiet. When implementation questions come up that they can't answer, they wait.

So the team waits. You step in. Repeat.

HBR published data on this in February. The stall point in AI adoption shifted to the middle layer. Managers can't set expectations for something nobody defined for them.

So the founder ends up as the de facto AI lead for the entire org while trying to figure it out themselves.

I see this in almost every business I step into. You bought the tools. You gave the team access. You're still the only one who knows what "done right with AI" means, or do you? I mean, let's be honest, it is really the wild wild west out there right now.

Regardless, that's Founder Dependency. The costume just changed.

The fix is real terms comes down to this: name an owner for each AI function, define what good output looks like, and put someone in the seat with authority to hold the team to it.

Until that's installed, you're not leading the business. You're running the tools.

2016
Looking at these photos and hearing the same tired take again:

“Courses are dead.”

They’re not.

Courses and launches still work.
They just look different now.

Back then, information was the value.
If you could make big ideas simple, people paid attention.

Bigger launches.
Bigger lists.
Bigger numbers.

In 2026, information is everywhere.
AI can give it to you in seconds, in any voice you want.

What people want now isn’t more information.
They want help deciding what actually matters.
And support while they build it.

I see this most when a launch “fails” even though the content is good.
It fails because the post-purchase experience isn’t truly owned.
No one is stewarding the culture and transformation after people buy.
So churn becomes the norm, and it compounds.

Here’s what’s actually dead:
– Selling information by itself
– Chasing likes and reach while calling it trust
– Businesses that only work when the founder is in the middle holding everything together

Here’s what’s still very alive:
– Implementation as the product, supported by smaller, deeper communities
– Choosing whose advice matters and blocking the rest
– Systems that don’t burn out the founder or the team

The businesses struggling right now aren’t failing because courses don’t work.

They’re struggling because they’re still playing a 2016 game in a 2026 world.

I watched a founder recently choose to go smaller on purpose.
Not because she couldn’t go bigger.
But because she already knew what “bigger” costs.

That stayed with me.

2016 was about more.
2026 is about enough.

This shift isn’t about better marketing.
It’s about better, more intentional design.

Back then it was:
“Here’s what to do.”

Now it’s:
“Let’s build this together and make sure it actually works.”

Curious how others are navigating this shift.

The Name of the Game:

Move fast. Build faster.