How AI is Changing The Chief of Staff Role in 2026 with Lauren Stein
Lauren Stein joins David Nebinski to unpack how the Chief of Staff role is evolving in the AI era — from "executive engineer" to startups' earliest hire. They dig into why Founders now want a CoS sometimes before they even launch, what AI-native companies expect from the role, and Lauren's advice for anyone interviewing: find the founder, not the job.
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Episode highlights:
- 00:30 Why the CoS press wave is happening now
- 01:00 “Every single job is becoming an engineer”
- 03:00 The role is arriving earlier and earlier at companies
- 07:00 Pitching yourself as a quasi-co-founder
- 10:30 The three levels of AI integration
- 13:45 The interview has changed: “Have you been a PM?”
- 15:30 Internal versus external roles
- 17:15 BizOps plus product: the builder, not just the operator
- 18:30 What this does to the COO role
- 21:00 “AI has made the role 100% more valuable”
- 37:00 “Find the founder, not the job”
Full video
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