Lao Zhang groaned at me last week

Last week at a café, Lao Zhang vented: '2 years as an indie consultant, 30 clients, I want to use AI to serve them—but I'm still hand-writing proposals and answering emails myself.'

What Airbnb's 'Inside-Out AI' Actually Is

Ahmad Al-Dahle jumped from Meta to Airbnb as CTO in January. On the Latent Space podcast, he laid out a playbook: first let AI reshape your internal team workflows (Airbnb now writes 60% of its code with AI, and engineer output visibly jumped), then once that's smooth internally, package the same capability for guests. He calls it 'Inside-Out AI.'

My biggest takeaway: big companies don't jump straight to serving customers with AI—they free up their own people first. I made the opposite mistake—I started by brainstorming 'what can AI do for my clients?', drew up a bunch of plans, and burned myself out. Should've flipped it: ask whether AI can do my repetitive stuff first.

Cost List You Can Copy Today

  • Money: $0 (free tiers of ChatGPT / Claude / Kimi are enough)
  • Time: 1-2 hours to audit your week and pick the 3 most repetitive tasks
  • Tech barrier: typing is enough, no code needed
  • First step: open your usual AI tool, paste in a proposal / contract / email you've written this week, and ask it: 'Which parts of this could you draft first so I edit them?'

Quick example—I had AI draft the first version of a client proposal. What used to take 3 hours now takes 40 minutes for a draft, then 20 minutes to adjust the tone to mine. The 2 hours I freed up? I'm using them to talk to new prospects.

How to Use This Thinking by Stage

Just starting out (0 clients or 1-2): Don't think about AI serving clients yet—let AI serve you. Outsource that 1 hour of daily organizing to AI, use the saved energy to talk to your next prospect. Not everyone needs this tool, but if you're burning out every night, it's a must.

Have 1-2 stable clients: Start looking at which client steps could take AI. Client wants a weekly report? Let AI draft it, you polish. Client keeps asking the same questions? Feed the answers into AI as an FAQ template. Heads up—I test small first. Don't walk in saying 'I'm using AI.'

Scaling (small team of 5+): Now you can do Airbnb's real move—flip your internal AI workflow and sell it to clients. If your AI-generated proposals are fast and solid, your client probably wants the same capability. That's the full 'inside-out' loop.

No rush if you don't try now—this thinking doesn't expire. Come back when you're drowning.