Daan van Rossum

13k 🚀 People Innovators 😍 Founder & CEO - FlexOS - Author, Future Work - Board Member, Dreamplex - Remote Work • Hybrid Work • Employee Experience • Employee Engagement

I grew up fascinated by innovation, work, people, and all the ways they interact.

That curiosity led me from digital strategy at Ogilvy to launching a magazine about happiness in a language I don't understand, running a network of coworking spaces, founding FlexOS, and eventually, Lead with AI.

We help leaders and organizations deploy AI toward meaningful impact through boot camps, ongoing education, community, and implementation. Visit https://www.leadwithai.co/ for more information. 

The mission, now spanning nearly a decade, remains the same: to help deliver a happier future of work. 

I spend time not “working” with my wife and son.

Founder & CEO

FlexOS levels up people-centric hybrid and remote leaders. 

Already used across some of the most innovative companies in the world, we are excited to turn more organizations into a place people love to work – with all of the freedom & flexibility employees crave in this day and age!

Former quant (Bridgewater, IMC). Now startup founder building in AI.

Jack Lau

Thousands of people lined up outside, not for a new iPhone. But to get an AI agent installed on their laptops. They were also handing out real lobster because the whole country now calls OpenClaw "raising a lobster."

My best friend Wei Hu just sent me a picture from Shenzhen.

Wei can't post this on LinkedIn, no access from China. So he sent it to me and said "people here need to see this."

He's not wrong.

I've been building in AI for the past year. Everyone I know in the West treats AI as a work tool. Something your company pays for. Something you open between Slack and Google Docs.

In China right now, people are treating AI agents like a cultural event. Local governments are giving out grants. A 67 year-old man asked his engineer son to help install "his lobster." Engineers are setting up in parking lots doing free installations.

Wei and I talk about AI almost every day. I've never heard him this shocked about what's happening around him.

We're in the same industry on opposite sides of the world and having completely different experiences of it.

2x Founder | Ex-Bridgewater + IMC | Searcle AI (Google + AI search)

My mom moved to a new country with no degree, no network, and barely any English.

She built a life from scratch — working double shifts, navigating systems that were never designed for someone like her.

She never built a startup. Not because she lacked ideas. Because the tools weren't built for her.

Tonight I walked into SheBuild Miami and watched hundreds of women — many who've never written a line of code — building real products. Real startups. In hours.

Vibe coding has changed something fundamental.

The barrier to building used to be technical skill. Now it's just imagination and the nerve to start.

I watched a room full of women who looked nothing like "typical founders" ship things that would've taken engineering teams months just two years ago.

My mom would've been one of them. She had the grit. She had the ideas. She just didn't have the tools.

This generation does.

Happy International Women's Day to every woman building something — whether the world sees it yet or not.

And to my mom: you built something too. You built me.

No alternative text description for this image

I met the founders of Notion  and OpenSea  in one night.

Ivan Zhao and Akshay Kothari hosted an evening with Lasagna Capital — and Devin Finzer from OpenSea and the Traded VC team were in the room.

One thing that stuck with me: every conversation kept coming back to AI agents. Not the hype — but where this is actually heading.

We're moving toward a world where AI agents are treated like full-time employees. You hire them. You fire them. You evaluate their performance. They have specialties, strengths, weaknesses — just like people.

And if your agent is good enough, someone else might want to hire it too.

The org chart of the future might not be all human.

The Forbes 30 Under 30 to federal investigation pipeline is undefeated.

A YC-backed compliance startup that raised $32M is now accused of systematically faking SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR reports. For hundreds of clients.

According to the investigation:
→ 493 out of 494 audit reports used identical boilerplate — same grammatical errors and all
→ Auditor conclusions were pre-written before any auditor reviewed evidence
→ All 259 Type II reports claimed zero security incidents. Zero. Across every single client
→ Their "US-based auditors" were allegedly Indian certification mills operating through shell entities

The company that was supposed to make you compliant may have made you criminally liable instead.

HIPAA violations. GDPR fines up to 4% of global revenue. For compliance you thought was handled.

This is what happens when "move fast and break things" meets regulated industries. Some things shouldn't be disrupted with templates and a thin SaaS wrapper.

Due diligence on your compliance vendor might be the most important compliance check you run.

How Waymo turned a 15-minute ride into 2 hours.

I've used it a bunch in SF and Austin — never had an issue. First time trying it in Miami and the car just decided the freeway wasn't an option.

We looked at each other, got out, and called an Uber.

Made it in 12 minutes.

The market just taught every CEO in the world that firing people for AI makes your stock go up.

Meta just announced they're cutting 20% of their workforce. That's about 15,000 people. The stock went up 3%.

Block laid off 4,000 people last week. Nearly half the company. Jack Dorsey said it was because of AI. Stock went up.

Atlassian cut 1,600. Said they were "redirecting resources toward AI." Stock went up.

Nobody's really talking about what's actually driving this.

Wall Street has a new formula. It used to be "company does well, stock goes up." Now it's "company replaces humans with AI spend, margins look better on paper, stock goes up." 

And it creates a loop that's hard to break. One CEO sees a competitor's stock jump after AI layoffs. Their board asks why they're not doing the same thing. They announce their own "AI restructuring." Stock jumps. Next CEO copies.

AI-related cuts pushed US layoffs past 1 million in 2025. 2026 is on pace to beat it.

I run an AI company so I see the other side of this. The question I keep hearing from companies isn't "how do we make our team more productive with AI." It's "how many people can we cut if this works."

That's not what people are saying on LinkedIn. But it's what's being said in every boardroom I've been in.

If the market literally rewards replacing humans, what's the incentive to keep them?

taplio

The Battle

Daan van Rossum

Jack Lau

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJack Lau's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Daan van Rossum

Jack Lau

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jack Lau's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJack Lau's LinkedIn Performance