Angelina YangFounder and Host, TwoSetAI · AI builder for visibility and discoverability

He Built and Sold Two AI Companies. His Best Lesson Isn't About AI. | Jay Hack, Head of AI @ClickUp

16 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview segment, Jay Hack, Head of AI at ClickUp, reflects on the rapid evolution of AI coding agents beyond pure programming tasks. He explains that these agents are now being used for a wide range of knowledge work—including data analytics, drafting well‑reasoned documents, and handling customer support—demonstrating that code is essentially an explicit encoding of reasoning. Hack argues that humans vastly underestimate how many cognitive tasks AI will soon perform, suggesting that any task that can be defined as a human activity is likely to be automated. He notes that the next major abstraction layer after code is natural language (English), which will enable even broader AI applicability. Finally, he offers unconventional business advice: contrary to common wisdom, you shouldn’t pitch your business, a point he believes is often overlooked.

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people were using it for totally non-code things. They'd ask it to do data analytics, draft documents that made well-reasoned arguments around things that they were trying to argue to their boss. They had it doing customer support. And it sort of dawned on us, this is so much bigger than code. A coding agent is actually a general-purpose knowledge work agent. Code is effectively an explicit encoding of reasoning. Humans vastly over-attribute the amount of work that they will be performing in the future. Pretty much any cognitive task that you can draw a circle around and say, this is something that a human performs, AI will perform. That happened again going to Python, and then it happens again going to Ellen. We're basically in that phase where the next level of abstraction is English. I think one thing that goes underappreciated is that you shouldn't pitch your business. It sounds ridiculous, but I think it's actually true.