Jason M. Lemkin calls "layup roles" tasks where trustworthy AI tools exist but companies aren't using them, often due to hiring gaps or misaligned focus. Start with customer support or software engineering work no one is doing, not by replacing functions that already work. Pick AI deployments that match your company's strengths.
So where do people start? You, you did a post that was about the layup roles.
Yeah.
And can you define, like, what are these layup roles? If somebody's like— you have now almost a year's worth of experience. Yeah. And getting agents into production, you've seen what works, you've seen what doesn't work. What are these layup roles? Where should people start?
Um, I think the layup— maybe it's Captain Obvious— the layup are the things where there is a tool that exists that is trustworthy where it's just not getting done in your org, right? And there are a lot of reasons it might not get done in your org. It might be an area that's tough to hire in. You might be in a geography that's tough to hire in. It might just be your DNA, right? There are companies that are very sales-centric organizations. There's companies that are very product-centric. If you like hate salespeople and you like product, maybe you should start with Agentic Sales, right? If you love sales and that's your superpower, right? Maybe get an AI to help you as an SE, right? Or to help you to support you as sales is a superpower. So don't try to replace the stuff that's sort of working. Look at where, like, there's literally no one doing the work, right? And so there's a lot of them, but, but, but at a basic level, you know, the two areas that took off the most quickly were support and programming engineering, right? A lot of us have terrible support.
Terrible support, right?
So that's still, that's still the easiest layup of all. Like, go try your own support yourself as a founder and executive. I bet 9 times out of 10 you're gonna cry how bad your support is. Not all of you, but people are often in tears when they do it. 100%. Yeah.
