Smart leaders are stuck on AI. I get their teams unstuck._

You've purchased the licenses. You've made the proclamations. You may even have an internal champion. Nothing has changed. I take a hands-on approach to showing your team what's possible and how.

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74%

CEOs who fear losing their jobs over AI within 2 years

— Dataiku / Harris Poll

95%

AI pilots that fail to deliver ROI

— MIT

80%+

Report NO productivity gains despite 70% using AI

— NBER

42%

Abandoned majority of AI projects before production

— S&P Global via CIO Dive

The tools exist. The results don't. The gap is not access. It's knowing what to aim for.

The internal champion.

A senior PM or engineer gets tapped as the AI person. But they have a day job. The old way is easier and less risky. AI stays a side project. This is my only job.

The one-off training.

Everyone learns generic prompting tricks. Nobody goes back to work and knows what to do next. It doesn't stick because it's not connected to your actual processes. I work on your real data, your real sprint work, your real pipeline.

The status quo.

You feel the pressure. You bought the licenses. You keep talking about it. Nothing changes.

All three fail for the same reason. There's no one showing your team what good looks like in the context of your actual business.

Product teams operate on live intelligence.

Customer support signals, sales conversations, competitive moves, and usage analytics synthesized as fast as the data comes in. Not every six months when someone has time to do a research cycle. Fewer sprints wasted building the wrong thing.

Engineers build systems instead of grinding through tickets.

Routine work gets executed by agents. Engineers focus on architecture, strategy, and the decisions that actually require judgment. Output per engineer increases because the nature of the work changes, not just the speed.

When I leave, the systems are already running.

I embed with your team and work on your actual processes. The environment is set up. The workflows are built. Your team has done it, not just watched it. The capability is theirs.

Talks, advisory, sprints, builds, and embedded leadership.

Five shapes of engagement, from a single talk to ongoing technical leadership. Each one stands on its own and earns the next. For CEOs facing decisions they can't delegate, a standing weekly advisory session is the usual starting point. I have no platform to sell you, so the read stays honest.

How I work →
The Workflow Breakthrough I Had to Delete
13 Aug 20263 min read

Companies are building workflows around what today’s AI can’t do. As the technology improves, those workarounds can preserve unnecessary labor and keep better models working like the ones they replaced. A notification hook I depended on showed me how useful scaffolding becomes a constraint.

Give AI an instruction manual for your family calendar
11 Aug 20266 min read

Create a family logistics file, connect it to your calendars, and use AI to propose coverage and make the assignments after you approve them.

I'm Going to Have to Say Goodbye to Granola
05 Aug 20265 min read

After years with Granola, I'm assembling a replacement around my own workflow. That personal decision reflects a larger shift in software as AI makes bespoke tools practical and changes what makes a software business defensible.

Read all posts →

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name_ Saadiq Rodgers-King
location_ Brooklyn, NY
edu_ Princeton CS, MIT Sloan MBA
exp_ 20+ years
focus_ AI transformation

I've spent my career at the intersection of product, engineering, and strategy. Four of the companies I built and led were acquired, by Facebook, GoDaddy, Gerber Life, and Yuga Labs. I know what high performance with these tools looks like. Not the LinkedIn version.

If you're a CEO or CPO at a tech company where the AI mandate landed but nothing's changed, let's talk about what's actually possible.

More about me →

> saadiq — available for engagement_