Replit CEO Amjad Masad just laid out a vision for the future of business, and it looks nothing like the companies we work in today.
In a recent talk at Y Combinator's AI Startup School, Masad envisioned a world where AI agents do all the heavy lifting, allowing anyone to build complex software simply by describing what they want. In this future, he predicts the value of traditional SaaS products will plummet to zero, as users spin up personalized apps on demand.
But his most radical idea goes even further: This shift won’t just change software. It will fundamentally rewrite how companies are structured. According to Masad, rigid organizational hierarchies are on their way out, soon to be replaced by fluid networks of generalists collaborating with autonomous AI tools.
To unpack this vision and what it means for businesses everywhere, I talked it through with SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 168 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.
Masad argues that the model of extreme specialization, born from the industrial revolution, is becoming obsolete. For generations, companies have been built like assembly lines, with each employee responsible for one specific part of the product.
But what happens when your HR professional can also be a software engineer, a marketer, and a product manager, all by leveraging AI agents?
"You go into the world where jobs will become less specialized, less siloed," Masad says. The result is a company that operates less like a rigid hierarchy and more like a dynamic network. "It'll look more like an open source project than it will look like a traditional company hierarchy with a marketing department, sales department."
This is the exact idea that has captured Roetzer’s attention as he plans to scale his own business.
“This is the one that I lay in bed thinking about,” he says. “I don't want to structure my business in a traditional, rigid way when we have the opportunity to reimagine this as an AI native company.”
For legacy companies with thousands of employees, this transition will be a monumental challenge. But for new and growing businesses, it’s a massive opportunity.
“That's why I'm convinced disruption is coming,” says Roetzer. “Legacy companies have to get where we're trying to go, but they have to first get through what already exists to do it. So that's the idea of AI native versus AI emergent companies that we often talk about. It’s way, way easier to be an AI-native company right now.”
In this new model, the most valuable employees won’t be hyper-specialists, but adaptable generalists, according to Masad. At Replit, he is already putting this into practice by building a product team where designers, engineers, and product managers are "all almost always in the same person."
The goal is to "merge a lot of roles together and create this generalist employee," he says.
Roetzer sees this as a fundamental shift in how we should think about hiring and talent.
“Do we really hire salespeople and customer success people and marketing people?” he asks. “Or are you just hiring really intelligent people with great ideas and the ability to work with agents who can maybe work cross-functionally?”
For professionals who have built their careers on a single, specialized track, this requires a new way of thinking. You don’t have to simply be locked into your prior experience. By working effectively with AI, you can—and likely will—wear a lot of professional hats moving forward, not just the hat of a marketer or a salesperson or a customer success professional.
“You can be anything now,” says Roetzer.
If AI agents can handle the technical execution, what becomes the most critical human contribution? According to Masad, it’s simple: ideas.
He predicts a future where an employee’s mandate is no longer to complete a list of tasks, but to "make the business work, generate value for the business." In short, everyone becomes an entrepreneur within the organization.
Roetzer agrees, noting this shift places a premium on experience and strategic thinking.
“The greatest resource he's saying is the ideas of what to use AI to do,” Roetzer explains. “So if we assume we all have access to this genius-level intelligence on demand for anything we want to do. What do you do with it?”
The people who can answer that question will be the most valuable.
“This bodes really well for senior-level people who can envision the application of this intelligence to their businesses,” Roetzer adds.
Masad’s vision isn’t just a theoretical exercise. It’s a practical roadmap for a new kind of company, built from the ground up to be lean, agile, and AI-native. This is a future where a small team of generalists, armed with powerful AI agents, can achieve what once required hundreds or even thousands of employees.
It's a reality that has Roetzer both excited and laser-focused.
“We're still planning on hiring a ton of people,” he says. “But I'd rather hire 50 or a hundred versus a thousand. I don't want more than I have to have as an entrepreneur and as a CEO.”
For leaders and professionals alike, the message is clear: the fundamental structures of business are being rewritten by AI. The companies that thrive will be the ones willing to abandon old hierarchies and embrace a more fluid, networked, and entrepreneurial way of working.
As Roetzer puts it:
“I don't know that there's ever been a better time to build a company when you think about it in this way.”