I’m Amos Bar Joseph, co-founder of Swan, the first Autonomous Business OS. At Swan, we’re building what we call the Autonomous Business: a company that scales to $10M ARR per employee with no bloat, no assembly lines, no Cog Culture. Just humans in their zone of genius, amplified by AI agents.

I write The Big Shift to share contrarian insights from that journey, on GTM, leadership, and the future of work. If you want to understand how GTM evolves beyond playbooks and assembly lines, this is where the story unfolds.

This Week’s Newsletter

Since launching Swan 6 months ago, it’s just been 3 co-founders and a swarm of AI agents.

In that time, we’ve worked with over 200 AI implementations. And here’s the lesson: the teams who win with AI aren’t the ones with the fanciest models.

They’re the ones who design against Cog Culture - the factory mindset that turns humans into cogs and buries genius under process.

The Problem: Cog Culture

Cog Culture is what happens when teams implement AI the wrong way.

It’s about stifling adaptability. It’s about replacing humans instead of amplifying them.

It’s about chasing “perfect automation” instead of designing for resilience.

On the surface, Cog Culture looks efficient. In reality, it kills creativity, adaptability, and trust.

The 3 Lessons to Avoid Cog Culture

1. Keep Humans in Charge

AI should strip away drag, not strip away ownership. When people lose decisions, judgment, and growth opportunities, you’ve automated your way into fragility.

2. Protect the Zone of Genius

Your best people should never drown in tickets, manual ops, or admin.

The role of AI is to clear the noise so humans can stay in their Zone of Genius, where they’re naturally excellent and disproportionately valuable.

3. Measure the Human + AI Unit

The question isn’t “how fast is the model?” It’s “does the human + AI team perform better together?”

Trust, clarity, mental load, and outcomes matter more than raw speed.

The Big Shift View

The Big Shift isn’t AI replacing people.

It’s humans + AI evolving together, agents stripping away system drag, humans setting vision, combatting bias, and creating the value only they can.

The future belongs to the teams who get this balance right. Those who don’t will stay stuck in Cog Culture. Those that remember that GTM isn’t an assembly line.

That’s Autonomous GTM.

And it only works when humans aren’t reduced to cogs, but elevated into creators.