Make Your Company Inheritable. Keep Becoming What AI Cannot

Kristian Kabashi

For Frank Bodin, Ethan Hays, Hans Hoffman, Thomas Spiegel, Belliappa Mathanda, Pete Chen, Gail Seymour, Neil Gissler, Jamie Reynolds, and Axel Konjack.

I met them in different companies, in different countries, on different sides of the desk. What they had in common was what they did with what they knew: they handed it over, and then expected me to outgrow it. That is the whole idea of this book, and they lived it on me first.

A note on names

Every story in this book comes from real experience. Most are single events I lived or watched from close enough to touch. A few are composites, the same situation seen more than once and assembled into one telling, and where I have done that I say so on the page. What I have not done, anywhere, is invent something to win a point.

I removed names and changed identifying details where they were not essential. Some of the people in these stories never asked to appear in a book, and the point is the operating pattern, not the gossip around it. Anonymizing and combining details reduces exposure. It does not make recognition impossible, and it is not a substitute for accountability or clearance.

Here is what matters for your trust. I anonymized the stories. I did not anonymize myself. My name is on the cover and my record is public at kristiankabashi.com. And the claims in this book are not all one kind. The public claims, the studies, the named companies, and the numbers are checkable against their sources in the Notes. The anonymized stories are testimony: real, offered as pattern rather than proof. Hold them to that test, whether they match what you have seen with your own eyes, and no more.

Work is for Bots, life is for Humans