AI and the Future of Work

385: From API Management to Agent Control: Why Governing AI Actions Is the Only Path to Enterprise Value, with Oren Michels, Co-Founder and CEO of Barndoor AISend us Fan Mail Oren Michels is an entrepreneur, investor, board member, and advisor to technology startups in the US and Europe. He is the co-founder and CEO of Barndoor AI, the control plane for agentic AI, and the founder who previously helped define the API management category with Mashery, acquired by Intel in 2013. He is also a Tony-nominated Broadway and Off-Broadway producer whose credits include Romeo+Juliet and Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney. In this episode, Oren draws on two decades of building foundational infrastructure for the enterprise to make the case that governing AI agents is not a security problem. It is an entirely new category of problem, and most companies do not yet have the vocabulary to describe it, let alone the tools to solve it. If your agents can already write to your CRM, interpret your instructions, and act without life experience or fear of consequences, who is actually in control? In this conversation, we discuss: • Why securing AI agents is entirely different from managing APIs, and why traditional security and identity access tools were never designed to handle what agents can do. • The reason most so-called agentic AI is still glorified robotic process automation, and what it will actually take to unlock enterprise value. • How Barndoor AI's "least privilege" framework for agents works, and why the permission logic goes far beyond the identity of the human using the tool. • Why an agent with delete access to your CRM is one probabilistic misfire away from a catastrophic outcome, and why ultimate responsibility always comes back to the humans operating the tools. • The BYO AI parallel to BYOD: why well-meaning employees using personal AI tools with company data may force the enterprise governance moment no one is ready for. • Why the same instinct that took Oren from API infrastructure to Broadway and back to enterprise AI may be exactly the mindset the agentic era demands from its builders. Explore this conversation: 00:00 Intro and fun Fact 03:46 Oren Michels's Path From API Management to Building Barndoor AI 05:44 Redefining Trust: AI Lacks Life Experience and Fear of Consequences 08:24 History Repeating: Why AI Needs a Control Plane Just Like APIs Did 12:35 Deterministic APIs vs. Probabilistic Agents: Why Governing AI Is a Social Challenge 18:25 How Barndoor AI's "Least Privilege" Framework for Agents Actually Works 20:50 The Token Economy and Context Windows: Wandering Into the AI Home Depot 25:25 Preventing Catastrophic Failures: Why AI Agents Should Never Have Delete Access 31:39 The BlackBerry Moment of AI: Navigating the "BYO AI" Enterprise Trend 38:04 Balancing Tech and Creativity: From Enterprise AI to Producing on Broadway Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Oren on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI may eliminate jobs: what the data reveals

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384: When AI Creates Art, What Stays Human? with Jake Saper, General Partner at Emergence CapitalSend us Fan Mail Jake Saper is a General Partner at Emergence Capital, one of the most iconic venture firms in enterprise software, with a portfolio that includes Zoom, Gusto, Veeva, and Together AI. Emergence has backed some of the most category-defining B2B companies of the last two decades, and Jake has spent nearly 12 years at the center of that deal flow. What sets Jake apart is a life lived on both sides of the creativity question: he backs the companies building AI but also performs across genres from blues to metal as a working musician. In this episode, Jake brings that rare combination of investor rigor and artist instinct to one of the hardest questions AI is forcing us to face, and whether you leave reassured or unsettled may depend entirely on how much of your identity is wrapped up in the work you create. In this conversation, we discuss: • How AI will democratize the creation of art but commoditize its execution, ultimately causing the value of live, dynamic human performances to skyrocket. • The stunning acceleration of startup growth, with top-quartile B2B software companies now scaling from zero to $1 million in ARR in just four months. • How the flood of AI-generated content is turning attention into the real bottleneck, and why curation and point of view become the new competitive advantage. • Why Jake believes the market will self-regulate the anthropomorphization of AI agents in the workplace, and where that logic has a hard limit. • What Geoffrey Hinton said about building AI "like a mother," why it was both comforting and deeply unsatisfying, and what it reveals about AGI risk. • Why Jake argues disclosure matters during this transition period, but what he actually wants people to ask about art as AI becomes a normal creative tool. Explore this conversation: 00:00 Why AI Makes It Easier to Build a Demo and Harder to Build a Moat 05:25 From Cell Towers to Venture Capital: Jake Saper's Path to Emergence 08:53 How AI Is Compressing Startup Growth: From 18 Months to 4 Months to $1M ARR 18:05 What Art Actually Is: Compressed Human Experience and the Act of Making Meaning Shareable 23:30 How AI Can Unlock Latent Creativity in People Who Don't Think of Themselves as Creators 26:55 Why Disclosure Matters When Trust and Authenticity Are at Stake 30:19 Navigating a Post-Truth Era: When Everything Looks Synthetic, What Do We Believe? 32:14 Why the Value of Live Performance Is About to Skyrocket 35:58 As Soulless Entities Multiply, Soul-to-Soul Human Connection Becomes More Valuable 40:38 What Geoffrey Hinton Said About Building AI "Like a Mother" and Why It Was Unsatisfying 43:04 Why the Most Enduring Art Has Always Been About Transfer, Not Authorship Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Jake on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI Is Revolutionizing Creativity in Art, Music, and Education

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