A founder went from zero to $10 million ARR in six months with six engineers and fifty agents, and the gap between idea and shipped feature was nine hours.

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Most CTOs think going deeper on the tech is how they win this AI wave. My guest this week thinks that instinct is working against them.

Nat (Rajesh) Natarajan is COO at G-P and has had a front row seat to every major platform shift since he helped found Travelocity in 1995, which is why his read on this moment carries weight.

He's convinced this shift is bigger than the internet, mobile, and cloud combined. But the CTOs who pull ahead won't be the ones with the deepest technical mastery. They'll be the ones who understand the business well enough to know which problems are actually worth solving.

Nat shared a story about a founder who went from zero to $10 million ARR in six months, with six engineers and roughly fifty agents doing the work. The gap between a customer idea and shipped capability was nine hours.

That's the world CTOs are now leading in. Technical skills are becoming a commodity. Critical thinking, business judgment, and knowing what the CEO actually needs from you are not.

If you're a CTO trying to figure out where to stand in this shift, start here.

You'll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:06] How early machine learning at PayPal and Ancestry taught Nat what AI is really for

[9:43] Why this AI shift is bigger than internet, mobile, and cloud combined

[11:06] The 5% who see the future, and why they're rarely your best engineers

[15:34] Why a 1976 prediction about paper currency should humble every AI evangelist

[17:50] Six engineers, 50 agents, $10 million ARR in six months

[23:32] Why only the CEO can actually make a company AI-first

[32:12] Unreasonably reasonable: how Nat pushes teams toward goals they won't fully hit

[35:54] The guardrails problem most agentic solutions are ignoring

[42:32] Why technical skills are now a commodity and critical thinking is the North Star

To learn more about G-P and its agentic AI innovation, please visit g-p.com.

If you’re on LinkedIn, be sure to follow G-P there too.

Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.