Iwo Szapar

Hybrid Work Expert

AI Maturity Index

In a world where 77% of leaders won't consider candidates without AI skills, understanding your AI maturity isn't just nice to have — it's career-critical.

Introducing an AI adoption GPS - showing where you are, where others are heading, and your fastest path forward.

That’s exactly what we’ve built: a 15-min diagnostic tool powered by real-world data from thousands of professionals.

It's simple 
1. Chat with our AI assistant for 15 minutes about yourself and your AI usage 
2. Get an instant 5-page report with scores, benchmarks, and personalized coaching 
3. Run group reports for your whole team or company

Co-Creator

Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia

Co-hosting a program for 22 Saudi AI startups in building production-ready AI agents from concept to deployment. 

Key Focus Areas:
- AI agent architecture and orchestration strategies
- Business model innovation for AI-native companies
- Go-to-market positioning in the MENA region
- Technical troubleshooting and implementation guidance
- Strategic planning for scalable AI solutions

Working alongside the Kingdom's Centre of Digital Entrepreneurship and Saudi AI Leadership Forum to accelerate the next generation of AI companies leveraging Saudi Arabia's unique regulatory clarity and infrastructure advantages.

Program Highlights:
- Weekly workshops on agent development and business strategy
- 1:1 coaching sessions with individual startup founders
- Office hours for real-time technical support and troubleshooting
- Demo day presentations to industry leaders and potential investors

Supporting entrepreneurs who understand that sustainable AI competitive advantages come from workflow integration, cultural intelligence, and solving real customer problems - not just having the latest models.

AI Advisor

Supporting the „Tech Founders” program

Startup Mentor

South Summit

Working with South Summit's global team to connect startup founders with investors and corporate partners across Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Part of a hands-on community that's built 100+ successful exits and facilitated over $17B in startup funding.

AI Ambassador

Saudi AI Leadership Forum

Together with 350+ AI Enthusiasts 🇸🇦, we are dedicated to exploring the vast potential of AI as Saudi Arabia embraces Vision 2030, fostering a community where ideas flourish and connections are made. 

Our mission is to empower each member through insightful discussions, expert-led workshops, and collaborative projects. Whether you're a seasoned AI developer, a business leader seeking to harness AI's power, or simply AI-curious, we offer a platform to learn, share, and grow.

Chief AI Officer & Founder

Remote-First.Institute

Fixing change management with AI. 

- User Expansion: From 319 users in Q3 2023 to 2,003 users (8% paying) in Q2 2024
- Revenue Growth: From $148 in Q3 2023 to $10,635 in Q2 2024
- AI-Assistant Deployment: From 1 AI-Assistant in Q3 2023 to 201 in Q2 2024

🚀 The Journey Begins

In spring 2023 we were looking for ways to productize the "Remote Work Audit" that we've been successfully selling for many years at Remote-how. We decided to experiment with how AI can help. 

During two hackathons with Google and OpenAI, we created a simple prototype and brought it to users. They loved it, so we continued building which led to the creation of AI-Mentor, and eventually getting into an AI Accelerator Program in Saudi Arabia. 

Today AI-Mentor is a change management platform designed for consultants. It offers AI-enhanced interview toolkits, multi-stage AI-Assistants, and workplace analytics. These tools streamline consultancy operations and improve client engagement.

🧠 Projects I lead within AI-Mentor:

1. AI-Powered Remote Work Audit  

- Insight: Productized the "Remote Work Audit" using AI-Assistants.
- Impact: Evaluates remote work capabilities across 120 essential areas during an async conversation with employees, providing deep insights and actionable recommendations to enhance productivity.

2. 30-Day AI Productivity Experiment

- Objective: Conducted a 30-day experiment where 300 ambassadors were given access to an AI Productivity Partner.
- Result: The AI Productivity Partner helped participants stay as productive as possible by managing their calendars, planning tasks, scheduling deep work sessions, providing daily coaching, and offering productivity scores.

3. AI Hackathons

- Initiative: Hosted multiple hackathons (virtual & in-person), engaging over 400 participants.
- Outcome: Empowered participants to build custom, no-code AI tools, significantly enhancing productivity and addressing workflow challenges.

Maker @ AI-Mentor

We are a not-for-profit organization on a mission to create a space with open-source and expertise knowledge about the remote-first work approach provided by the world’s leading future of work experts.

We launched the Remote-First Institute to:
- Counteract the global "back to the office" movement.
- Create Global Standards for companies on remote-first processes.
- Produce high-quality events, articles, reports, and analyses.
- Cultivate a global community for remote-first experts.

Head of AI Projects & Co-founder

▪️Advised 3,000+ companies, incl. Walmart, Microsoft, ING Bank, and Deloitte on how to work smarter.
▪️Spoke at 200+ events, incl. Global AI Summit, South Summit, The Next Web, Running Remote.
▪️Featured by BBC, Forbes, Prezi, Remote, HR Exchange Network, and more.
▪️Built a global community of 31,000+ people who believe work can be done from anywhere.
▪️Wrote a book "Remote Work Is The Way", alongside experts from Netflix, GitLab, and Mural.

Strategic Advisor | Community Builder | Speaker | Writer

Remote-how

Remote-how is the leading platform for remote work education and consulting, helping over 3,000 companies optimize their remote work strategies. We have built a robust community of 25,000+ remote work professionals and collaborated with 250+ experts from renowned companies such as Netflix, GitLab, Microsoft, Mural, and Hubspot. 

Our partners include industry leaders like Asana, Remote, Deel, Prezi, and Safetywing.

💡 Key Projects:

1. Remote-how Marketplace

- Overview: A consulting and virtual training marketplace connecting companies with top remote and hybrid work experts. The marketplace facilitates the hiring of experts for audits, consulting, workshops, and content creation.
- Impact: Provided companies with access to specialized remote work expertise, improving their operational efficiency and remote work practices.

2. Remote-how Academy:

- Overview: The first global, online education and certification program covering essential remote work skills and tools. The academy offers tailored programs for remote workers, HR professionals, and managers.
- Programs:
* Certified Remote Manager
* Certified in Remote Human Resources
* Certified Remote Individual
- Impact: Educated and certified hundreds of professionals, enhancing their ability to effectively manage and thrive in remote work environments.

3. Remote Future Summit:

- Overview: Until 2020, it was the world's largest virtual conference focused on remote work, gathering industry leaders, experts, and practitioners to share insights, strategies, and innovations in the remote work field.
- Impact: Hosted thousands of participants globally, providing invaluable networking opportunities and access to cutting-edge knowledge on remote work trends and best practices.

CEO & Co-founder

Microsoft

I hosted a series of open webinars and invite-only workshops about hybrid work best practices for the Microsoft community and clients.

Remote Work Advisor

I helped build the first in the company's history "Hybrid Work Playbook".

Walmart

I worked with the HR team on Walmart's CEO's remote work strategy proposal.

🚀 Remote-First Activist | Top 50 Remote Influencer | Since 2017, shaping the future of remote-first world

Aloha, I'm Iwo Szapar! I help build future-proof organizations at the intersection of AI and human potential.

🌍 Key Achievements:
- Transformed work approaches at 3,000+ companies including Microsoft, Walmart, and ING Bank
- Co-created the AI Maturity Index with Harvard researchers, democratizing enterprise-grade AI readiness insights
- Established the Saudi AI Leadership Forum and co-founded AI-Mentor to accelerate organizational AI adoption
- Built a global community of 25,000+ professionals championing location-independent work
- Created an expert network of 250+ consultants from companies like GitLab, Netflix, and Hubspot

My work gathered recognition from Forbes and BBC. I authored "Remote Work Is The Way" and have spoken at over 150 events incl. Web Summit, South Summit and The Next Web, while living in 15 different countries.

Born in Gdansk, Poland, I've embraced the 'slowmad' lifestyle that informs my perspective on the future of work. When not researching AI applications, I'm reading history books, surfing, or DJing with my dog Luna nearby.

Connect to explore how AI can help your company work smarter! 🚀

🚀Remote Work Advocate & Co-founder

Remote-how helps companies make remote & hybrid work, work. Since 2017. 

🤓 Remote-how Marketplace - the world’s leading remote & hybrid work experts marketplace. Work on your consulting and advisory projects with 200+ pre-vetted practitioners from top distributed companies. 

🚀 Remote-how Campus - a community where leaders of hybrid teams come to connect, learn and grow together with access to live leadership development programs, mentoring services, and more.

I've been using AI at work for 1,067 days straight. 5 months ago, I canceled  almost all my AI subscriptions and now spend 99% time with this one #vibeworking tool. 

Claude Code is all what you need. ❤️  

This post won't be about convincing that EVERYONE should be using Claude Code (don't let the "code" in the name mislead you: it's a game changer for all knowledge workers). Or maybe it will be? :D 

So... Claude Code is the single best tool on the market now to build and run AI Agents doing things for you like research, writing, brainstorming, coding and more.

My growing team of AI subagents (now 22) are connected to different software I use eg. Hubspot, Gmail, Calendar, Google Analytics, LinkedIn and more. So that they can execute tasks on my behalf.

But wait, it's actually something bigger. 

Imho it's the LARGEST PRACTICAL shift in knowledge work since the "ChatGPT moment". 

Claude Code enables you to build a personalized "Second Brain" with outstanding execution capabilities.  

It tackles the biggest issue with AI - #contextengineering.

Sounds complex? Not at all.

If you oversimplify this: it's a collection of folders and files with instructions and context to empower AI do what you want. 

Claude Code + GitHub (where you store your "brain" files with your work context, structured) have created the largest productivity unlock I've ever had. 

I've shifted my whole work to GitHub for context management (bye bye Google Docs and Notion), and combined it the power of Claude Code. And you should do it to… 

Comment below "CLAUDE" and I will share with you PDF with my ready-to-use setup.

Co-Creator @ AI Maturity Index 🚀 | Entrepreneur, Writer, Speaker 👨‍💻 | 15 countries called home 🌍

My Friday's post got 2,169 comments in 3 days. 🤯 

About Claude Code. The most underrated AI tool for non-technical people.

Here's the irony: only 5% of my work is code.

The name "Claude Code" is killing adoption among knowledge workers. And that's a crime because this is the biggest shift in how we work since ChatGPT dropped.

I've been using AI for 1,067 days straight.

5 months ago I canceled almost all my AI subscriptions.

Now I spend 99% of my time in Claude Code.

Not because I became a developer.

Because I built a second brain that actually executes.

Here's what changed:

The Problem: AI tools have zero context about your work. You explain the same thing 50 times. You copy-paste. You lose hours feeding context.

What I Built: 22 specialized AI agents living in GitHub folders. Each one knows exactly what I do, how I work, and what tools I use.

They're connected to:
- HubSpot (CRM)
- Gmail and Calendar
- LinkedIn
- Google Analytics
- PostgreSQL database
- 8 other systems

What This Means: My agents don't just chat. They execute. Run research. Draft emails. Analyze data. Write content. 

All with full context of my business.

The setup sounds complex. It's not.

It's just folders and markdown files in GitHub. Instructions and context. That's it.

Claude Code reads these files and becomes an expert in your work.

This isn't about AI replacing you.

It's about building a personalized execution layer that knows your business as well as you do.

The "ChatGPT moment" was about conversation.

This moment is about execution.

And if the word "Code" in the name stops you from trying it, you're leaving the biggest productivity unlock of 2025 on the table.

Want to see exactly how I set this up?

Comment "CLAUDE" in the original post - added in comments - and I'll send you the document with everything you need to get things going.

#vibeworking #claudecode #aiagents

"Hey, did you know that GPT-5 can now do 65% of your consulting associate work. Shocked?!"

That's the finding from APEX Research's September 2025 benchmark. Not hypothetical tasks. The actual work filling the first 2-3 years of consulting careers. Tasks like analyzing industries, evaluating markets, building strategic and financial models, preparing presentations.

The benchmark was advised by Dominic Barton (former McKinsey Global Managing Director) and built with experts from McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, Accenture, and EY.

Here's what makes 65% significant:

It's not 50% (interesting but not actionable).
It's not 80% (replacement territory).
It's the threshold where AI becomes a legitimate productivity multiplier for senior consultants while making the traditional analyst role economically inefficient.

BCG is already reporting they're meeting output targets with the same headcount. PwC has seen clients pull back contracts, replacing "consultants of yesterday" with AI. By 2027, firms that hired hundreds of analysts annually will need far fewer.

The consulting industry built itself on a pyramid. Junior associates did the grunt work, a few became partners. AI just removed the bottom two floors.

The pattern is clear. AI handles structured analytical tasks well. It struggles with ambiguity, client relationships, and strategic judgment that comes from lived experience.

The question isn't "Will AI replace consultants?"

The real questions are:

1. If you're a consulting firm, are you restructuring for the "obelisk model" (fewer layers, smaller teams, AI-augmented seniors), or are you still hiring like it's 2022?

2. If you're a junior consultant, are you building AI fluency and strategic thinking skills, or are you perfecting Excel models that won't exist in 18 months?

3. If you're a client, are you paying for analysis (which AI does at 65% proficiency for $0.02 per task), or are you paying for judgment, relationships, and implementation expertise?

The firms that figure this out first won't just survive. They'll operate at 50% higher efficiency (per BCG's data) while their competitors are still debating whether AI is "ready."

The 65% threshold isn't a future concern. It's September 2025. The restructuring has already started.

What are you doing differently?

I stopped using ChatGPT the way everyone else does.

And it changed everything.

Most people open ChatGPT. Type their question. Get an answer. Close the tab.

Next day, they do it again. From scratch.

The AI has zero memory. You re-explain everything. Every single time.

I realized something: This is not how our brains work.

Your brain builds on yesterday's thinking. It remembers context. It connects dots across weeks and months.

So I built my own system. A repository of files and folders. My entire life, organized in one place.

Work projects. Personal goals. Meeting notes. Ideas. Everything.

And I connected it to Claude Code.

Now the AI remembers. It knows my context. My preferences. My standards.

I don't re-explain. I don't start from zero.

I just continue where I left off.

This is not just about AI. It's about organizing your thinking.

The repository forces clarity. What matters? Where does it go? How does it connect?

AI makes it useful. But the unlock is the structure itself.

Think of it like this:

ChatGPT is renting a hotel room every night.

A Life OS is owning a house where everything has its place.

You know where things are. You build on what you created yesterday. Your system compounds.

I call it my second brain. Others call it a Life OS.

Whatever you call it, it changes how you work. And think. And live.

The best part? You don't need to be technical.

Just folders. Files. Clear organization.

The AI does the rest.

If you're ready to stop starting from scratch every day, this is your unlock.

Have you already started building your second 🧠?

Unpopular opinion: We should celebrate job automation.

Most of the 4,000+ professionals we've benchmarked through AI Maturity Index aren't afraid AI will take their jobs. 

They're discovering AI can give them back their lives.

The numbers tell a story we're not talking about:

#engineers
- Top 10% using AI: 24+ hours per week reclaimed
- Average engineers using AI: 8 hours per week saved
#productmanagers
- Top 10% using AI: 20+ hours per week back
- Average product managers: 9 hours per week freed up

That's not "productivity gains." 

That's dinner with your family. 
That's your kid's soccer game. 
That's an actual vacation where you don't check email.

We spent 150 years building an economy that demanded humans work 40-60 hours a week to survive. 

Then we spent another 50 years pretending that was normal.

It wasn't normal. It was necessary.

AI just made it unnecessary.

Your grandfather worked 80-hour weeks in a factory because he had no choice.
Your parents worked 60-hour weeks at the office because culture demanded it.

You? You have a choice AI just handed you.

The question isn't "Will AI take my job?"

The question is "What will I do with the time AI gives me back?"

Family dinners. 
Hobbies they'd forgotten about. 
Relationships they thought they'd sacrificed for "success."

That's not a job loss. That's getting off the treadmill we never questioned.

We should do everything possible to build a world where humans benefit from AI to the fullest.

Morocco 🇲🇦  - it's good to be back ✌

#remotework #surfing vibes

Jumble

Founder

AJ&Smart 

Guest Workshop Consultant & Coach

Senior Consultant - Facilitation & Research

Transvoice

UX Lead

FeedbackFrog

Levels

Hjärt-Lungfonden

Cint

UX Designer

reed.co.uk

Shelter UK

Freelance Designer

Love getting nerdy about Product? Join my free community👇

Over the last decade I’ve helped multiple product teams scale and transform both their products and businesses. During that time I realised the true super power of any great team is effective collaboration. 

So in 2022 I started Jumble, with the intention of helping product teams innovate faster, solve more complex challenges, and achieve better results, together.  

I believe that the only way to do this is to focus on building trust, ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to share their thoughts in a structured way where no single voice can dominate the discussion. 

To achieve this I’ve spent thousands of hours understanding how to craft and deliver the highest quality workshops around, and have built a network of partners that contains some of the very best facilitators in the world to support me in delivering them.

David Finnegan

Putting this out early because LinkedIn is showing people posts from 3 weeks ago. I'm doing a Free Discovery Training on Nov 12th @ 1630. 

See you there? 

https://luma.com/bkmk3xn5

Helping Product Leaders create products people actually want

Lovable’s CEO Anton just dropped the AI Playbook for Founders, and the advice he’s sharing might surprise you! 

The playbook runs through 5 steps: 

Problem → Launch → Believers → Product Market Fit → Scale. 

But what might surprise you is how little the playbook focuses on AI. 

What it focuses on is the solid fundamentals of building a successful product. 

Understand your customer, test your product, iterate, and optimise. 

It highlights where you can use AI to speed up the process. 

But here’s the real takeaway: AI isn’t going to help you skip the process, but it can help you move faster throughout the process. 

And from the CEO of one of the fastest growing AI startups ever, maybe that’s advice worth listening to? 

You can check out the playbook here: https://lnkd.in/dkGqsnSR

Vibe coding is going to allow a bunch of non-technical people to create things they could only imagine creating just a few years ago. 

And that's great!

But if you think that means we're going to have less of a need for Software Engineers you clearly do not understand the industry very well.

In the space of a year we've gone from 'AI is about to take your job' to 'We always knew how long AI adoption would take'. 

Why are AI founders suddenly so bearish on their own industry? 

Here's a few reasons I've heard:

→ They raised too much and now investors are starting to ask questions about profitability
→ Next gen tech is likely another incremental improvement, not a major leap forward
→ Costs of training are plummeting, questions about why so much is being spent on high end data centres are starting to pop up.
→ Increasingly clear lack of evidence that AGI is close to becoming a reality, many AI experts putting their predictions 10-20+ years out now.
→ Adoption challenges in the majority of business with GenAI, unclear or negative ROI, negatives of GenAI on the workplace becoming more apparent.
→ Lots of money moving between major players starting to raise eyebrows.

It's hard to know what's actually going on in the space, but it's start to get pretty silly looking. 

And it's a shame because if it weren't for all this silliness we'd all probably be having a lot more fun with GenAI, instead of having to deal with billionaires fearmongering to raise money. 

Why do you think the narrative is shifting so quickly?

Was chatting to a User Research buddy of mine a few weeks ago about my Product Discovery Foundations training. 

He said ‘It’s a bit simple isn’t it? Doesn’t everyone already know these things?’ 

It’s that assumption which kills research dead in tracks. 

I’ve worked with dozens of teams to improve their discovery over the last 10 years. And 9 out of 10 times, the biggest win is fixing the foundations. 

Too often researchers and discovery coaches fall into the curse of knowledge, they think that the stuff they’re talking about is a given. 

They’re so experience that they’ve forgotten how long it can take to get to grips with the fundamentals. 

The result is always the same - overwhelmed teams, underwhelming results. 

And a feeling that ‘research is a waste of time’. 

All because the didn’t nail down the fundamentals. 

So, if you wanna learn more about the foundations of good discovery or research? 

Join my free training on 12th of November. 

More details here: https://luma.com/bkmk3xn5

What’s one huge mistake I see discovery newbies making all the time?

Just listening to their customers.

They believe if they just ask the right questions, and are as unbiased as possible, the customer will just tell them what features or products they need.

This leads to products that are almost as badly designed as teams who don’t even bother speaking to their customers.

The purpose of discovery is to understand your customer.

Not for them to tell you what to do.

When you speak to a customer, they might tell you they want ‘feature x’.

But spoiler alert: Your customers are not good at designing products. That’s your job.

You need to listen, understand what they’re telling you.

And then, if you are hearing the same sort of pains, need, or desire they are explaining over and over, you should start thinking about how to address them.

This is the key to highly effective Discovery.

Remember, your customers can only share their thoughts and experiences.
You still need to figure out the product.

P.S. Want to get more out of your discovery? I’m running a free training on the 12th of November - sign up here: https://luma.com/bkmk3xn5

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David Finnegan

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The Battle

Iwo Szapar

David Finnegan

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Engagements

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