7 Things AI-Native Companies Do Differently

People have been excited about the idea of agents as teammates for a lot of 2026, going all the way back to the OpenClaw explosion. Increasingly, though, I am getting more and more convinced that agents as teammates is in fact the wrong mental model.

It goes beyond the title with direct discussion of agents, agent, work, including: I myself had an entire team of OpenClaws, some researchers, some writers, a bunch of different coordinators for projects, and a chief of staff that sat above them all.

1. 01People have been excited about the idea of agents as teammates for a lot of 2026, going all the way back to the OpenClaw explosion
2. 02Increasingly, though, I am getting more and more convinced that agents as teammates is in fact the wrong mental model
3. 03Or at least, it doesn't at all reflect how the most sophisticated users are using agents in practice