I advise a B2B startup that went from 4 developers to just the founder, who is technical but not a developer. It is now profitable and delivering just as many features with arguably better security. N=1

I'm not sure if I'm more productive, but in my role where most of my deliverables are technical documents or emails I think my output quality has gone up. Now that I typically use LLMs as a research assistant and editor before sending anything significant to co-workers or customers I'm sure I make fewer mistakes. AI catches a lot of gaps and errors. That's a significant qualitative improvement although I can't quantify that in terms of profit impact.

We ship features faster and workers are more independent. They can get the answers they need faster than ever. And i'm talking about the business itself if the business has enabled that. There are a ton of productivity gains.

But make no mistake. Being more productive does not equal higher profits because your customers think you've added value. Both value and productivity are highly subjective terms which is why it is measured differently depending on where you work.

Most businesses adapted to AI by shipping a lot more features in smaller increments of time. What they should have done is become much more ambitious and build moon shots in two quarters instead. You need to go big or go home if you're going all in on AI.

AI is not about productivity. It's about weaponizing the ability to ship fast go-to market features in the blink of an eye when it becomes necessary. If trends change fast and you can't adapt quickly with AI: you're dead. So you need to have AI ready to go, just in case.