Ankur Agarwal

In search of my long term interest | TK, PG & SJ Fanboy

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

Building products with AI can quickly lead to overbuild. Product discovery, focus, taste, judgement, distribution, marketing will be king in this age.

[Zeb Evans @DJ_CURFEW]

Today we reduced headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So I think it's important to be direct about what I'm seeing and why.

First, I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.

Second, this wasn't about cutting costs. Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional bands.

Most importantly, I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly. Everyone affected receives a package aimed at honoring their contributions and easing the transition.

I only see two options: wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively.

THE 100X ORGANIZATION
The primary change is that we're restructuring around what I call 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago.

Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.

The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn't. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems.

These roles will evolve. But waiting for that to happen naturally means falling behind now.

The 100x org is actually heavily dependent on people - infinitely more than today. This is only possible with 10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.

THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS

— THE BUILDERS: 10X ENGINEERS
I don't think most companies have internalized what's actually happening with AI in engineering. The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level - that is the farthest thing from reality.

Here's what we've validated recently at ClickUp: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment.

AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down.
Think about it - the bottlenecks are (1) orchestration - telling AI what to do, and (2) reviewing - what AI did. Everything is leapfrogged and no longer needed.
So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code?

And how do you want your best engineers to spend their time?

If your best engineers are spending time reviewing other people's code, then this is inherently an inefficient bottleneck. These engineers can review their agent's code much faster than reviewing human code.

The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x.

The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated.

I call this the great reckoning of AI coding, and every company will face this soon if not already.

More code is just another bottleneck to the best engineers, and ultimately to your company's impact as well.

— THE BUILDERS: 10X PRODUCT MANAGERS
Product management and design roles are merging.

Designers that have customer focus, become more like product managers.

And product managers that have intuition for UX become more like designers.

The bottleneck of user research is gone. It takes us just one mention of an agent to kickoff research and analyze results.

The bottleneck of product <> design iteration is also gone. The product builder iterates on their own, along with agents and skills that ensure alignment with quality and strategy.

Also controversial today - I believe that the wrong strategy is to have your PMs shipping code - that just introduces another bottleneck that the best engineers will waste their time on.

To be clear, PMs should be coding but they should do this in a playground to iterate, validate, and scope. That code should not go to production.

Everything outside of managing systems, orchestrating AI, and reviewing output becomes a bottleneck.
That's why the other roles that are critical along with these are the systems managers (to reduce bottlenecks) along with a bottleneck you can't replace - customer meeting time.

— THE SYSTEM MANAGERS
Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems - agent managers. We have many examples of these people at ClickUp.

The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I think most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing systems and compete in this new world.

You must create enough disruption so that old systems are deprecated entirely. If there's any definition for 'AI native' that's what it is.

— THE FRONT-LINERS
In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers.

This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace - even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings.

One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100% of their time with customers.

REWARDING 100X IMPACT
In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go?
In our case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those that enabled it.

We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can't afford to lose them.

You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace.

Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.

THE FUTURE
Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next.

The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago.

ClickUp is positioning to lead this shift, not just internally, but for our customers too. I've never been more certain about where we're headed.

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

@KantInEastt While I agree with the policy direction (will reduce dependency on oil imports), the implementation seems rushed. If majority of vehicles on the road are non E20 compliant, this needs to be phased out! Or they should have created an option with fuel additives for non E20 cars.

[Nathan Clark @nathanclark_]

it’s in gemini, just create it in ai studio. oh, that’s for your personal google one account. for workspace you need gemini business. no, not gemini advanced, that’s ai pro now. unless you need ai ultra. oh agents? you do that in spark actually. no, not gemini api managed agents, that’s different. for coding use jules. unless you mean the agentic ide, that’s antigravity. no, that’s the old antigravity, download the new one. actually gemini cli is being deprecated, use antigravity cli. no the flash model is smarter than the pro model. unless you need pro. if it’s video, use flow. no, flow uses veo. no, nano banana is images. actually that’s in gemini now. unless you’re in search, then it’s ai mode. no, research is notebooklm. anyway it’s all very simple.

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

Great design is invisible

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Nissan has a full-time lead engineer whose entire job is cup holders. His name is Chris Fischer. That gap is why people like him exist.

The channel between the two holders is a mug handle slot. Place a handled coffee mug in the circle and the handle drops into the gap so the cup sits centered and flush. Without it, a handled mug sits off-axis by about half an inch. At highway speed on a curve, that half inch is the difference between your coffee staying put and redecorating your center console.

The constraint these engineers solve is genuinely absurd. Standard cup holder diameter runs 2.5 to 3.5 inches. That one-inch window has to fit a 12oz soda can (2.6 inches), a Starbucks Grande (3.1 inches), a 40oz Hydro Flask (3.5+ inches), and a handled mug that's wider than all of them because the handle protrudes past the rim. Fischer has said the US market is the hardest to design for because Americans bring more container variety into their cars than any other country.

The channel solves a nasty geometry problem. You can't widen the cup holder bore to accept a handled mug without losing grip on smaller cans. So you cut a narrow escape route that lets the handle extend past the perimeter without increasing the effective diameter. Cup drops in, handle slots into the dead space between holders, and the mug sits at the same depth as a can. Zero moving parts.

Every car you've ever sat in has dozens of details like this. Features so precisely engineered that you never consciously register them. You'd notice in about four seconds if they were missing.

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

https://t.co/GJKYsvPZye

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

@flipkartsupport Update: Official credit card dispute filed for 'Services Not Rendered'. A late-stage 'priority' fix after 11 days of constant installation cancellations is a material breach. I rejected it as I've already sought alternatives. Over to the bank now. @flipkartsupport

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

.@Flipkart delivered a Daikin AC in 30 mins on April 29, but it’s been 8 days of NO installation. My requests were cancelled multiple times without consent. Now I’m being told "Return window closed" while waiting for THEM to show up. Unopened boxes are just sitting here. 1/2

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

Freaking geniusss!

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

He charged $49 for the words "solar-powered."

A clothesline is a solar-powered dryer. The physics is real. Sunlight provides about 1 kilowatt per square meter. Drying a wet load takes roughly 3 kWh because water needs 2,260 kilojoules per kilogram to evaporate. A rope across your yard captures more than enough sun and airflow to handle that in 1-3 hours.

Your electric dryer does exactly the same job using 3-5 kWh of grid power per load. The average US household runs about 280 loads a year. That works out to $127 per household, roughly $14 billion across the country, to evaporate water out of fabric.

His customers can't actually sue. He delivered what he advertised. A clothesline meets every technical definition of "solar-powered dryer." The fraud claim collapses the moment you describe what the rope physically does.

Customers paid $5 for the rope and $44 for the words.

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

So coool, models are only getting more human

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Mira Murati (former OpenAI CTO) just told you the entire voice AI race has been measuring the wrong thing.

Thinking Machines' first model release is a voice model with one standout number: 400ms turn-taking latency. That's the gap between when you stop talking and the model starts. Linguists studying conversation across 10 languages found the universal human average is around 200ms. Japanese clocks in at 7ms, Danish at 400ms. Anything over 600ms gets perceived as "awkwardly long" regardless of culture.

Where every other shipping voice model sits:

GPT-realtime-1.5: 590ms
Gemini-3.1-flash-live: 570ms
Qwen 3.5 OMNI: 2,140ms
GPT-realtime-2.0 (thinking): 1,630ms
Gemini-3.1-flash-live (thinking): 940ms

Every competing model lives on the wrong side of the perceptual cliff. TML at 400ms is the first one inside the human range. Danish-speed conversation, in a model.

This is what the $2B seed at a $12B valuation was buying. The single number that determines whether a person on a phone call thinks they're talking to a human or a robot.

The benchmark table tells the rest of the story. TML is competitive but not best on turn-based reasoning. IFEval 89.7 vs GPT-realtime-2.0 at 95.2. Where it wins is everything streaming. FD-bench V3 response quality at 82.8. Bigbench Audio at 75.7. Give up 5 points of structured reasoning, get 200ms of perceived humanity.

For a research assistant, that trade is wrong. For a phone agent, that trade is the entire product. Call centers, sales SDRs, customer support, telehealth intake, IVR replacement, drive-through ordering: every voice AI deployment that has to feel human or it dies.

OpenAI and Google have been racing each other on intelligence. Mira built the only model in the human conversation range.

[Blue Horseshoe @BlueHorse88]

@NoContextBrits 🤣

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

@alc2022 @alc2022 I want to thank you for posting all the in-depth knowledge here! In the last 2 years, I have 3xed my capital based on your picks (will down for no reason but FCF/share is king haha). You helped me build conviction to buy &amp; hold! Forever grateful ♥️

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

@moseskagan @adgirlMM I respect your takes but this one does not make sense. It’s like saying humans brought us x, so let’s elect donkeys. Btw, I like Spencer Pratt more than career politicians! Just object to the logic.

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

@flipkartsupport Update: Refused 'priority install' offered today. 11 days of silence &amp; 4 cancellations can't be fixed by late visit. Trust is gone. NCH Docket #9265806 stands for a REFUND only. Initiate pickup &amp; refund ASAP. @FlipkartSupport @jagoGrahakjago @jainv_ @consaff

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

@flipkartsupport Update: @Flipkart @flipkartsupport @DaikinIndia
has just cancelled the installation request for the THIRD time. This isn't a delay; it's a refusal to honor the service contract. How much longer will you hold my money for an uninstalled, unopened unit? #ConsumerCourt

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

@flipkartsupport DM sent. I have already filed an NCH grievance (Docket #9265806). I am not looking for 'more time' or 'faster installation'—I want an immediate return and refund for this unopened product.

[Vincenzo Landino @vincenzolandino]

This is so good. adidas nailed it.

Curious what this cost??

[Ankur Agarwal @handleloading]

Unpopular opinion: Employee pay should be tied to long term FCF/share instead of stock price.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

No company in history has ever been worth $9 trillion. Nvidia, the most valuable company on Earth, sits at around $4.3 trillion. Meta just told six of its top executives they could each earn hundreds of millions of dollars, but only if Meta gets there first.

The SEC filings dropped yesterday. CTO Andrew Bosworth, CFO Susan Li, CPO Chris Cox, and COO Javier Olivan all got stock options with price targets starting at $1,116 per share and climbing to $3,727. Meta closed at $593 yesterday. The lowest rung alone requires an 88% stock gain. The full payout needs more than a 6x jump. These are the first stock options Meta has ever given its top leadership since going public in 2012. Fourteen years of just RSUs (shares you receive over time no matter what the stock does), and now suddenly, options, which pay nothing unless the stock clears a specific price bar.

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t part of this. His net worth already tops $200 billion. This is about keeping his operators in their seats while Meta pours up to $135 billion into AI infrastructure this year alone. That’s nearly double the $72 billion it spent in 2025. Meta’s total 2025 revenue was $201 billion. The company is spending roughly two-thirds of its annual revenue on building out AI.

The structure echoes Tesla’s $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk, which shareholders approved last November. That deal ties to Tesla reaching $8.5 trillion over 10 years. Meta’s window is tighter. The performance deadline is February 14, 2028, less than two years from now. If the stock doesn’t hit those targets by then, the options shift to a slower payout schedule through 2030 and expire entirely in March 2031.

And the gap between ambition and reality is wide. META stock is down about 4% over the past year. Alphabet is up 73%. CNBC reported that Meta has struggled to find a consistent AI strategy even as its spending accelerates.

The $9 trillion number is a retention price tag. Meta is paying whatever it costs to keep its leadership from walking out the door during a $135 billion bet on AI.

[The Casual Fan @effonecasualfan]

the thing is, they're absolutely right,

One of the beauties of Formula 1 has always been seeing some of the greatest talents in the sport unleashed over a single lap where they wring the neck of the car and drive the thing right at the edge of adhesion,

This includes braking as late as possible, pushing the cars right to the edge of the grip that the tires and the machine can take and leave nothing on the table,

this was what made some of the stunning laps of the last decade or so special,

when you watch the onboards now and you see George Russell, THE MAN WHO SECURED POLE POSITION, lift a kilometer before the braking point in the Turn 9-10 section, or a Charles Leclerc lift a considerable distance before the braking zone into Turn 1, you see these drivers being forced to drive well within themselves.

F1 is not a drag race, we have IndyCAR and NASCAR for that, it's about the skills and precision in the intricate parts of the track....this regulations have taken that away....

Driver will HATE this and they have every right to...so will the hardcore fanbase.

things need to change and soon because this was depressing to watch...

and we've not even gone racing yet 🤦