Etched CEO Hires Industry Veterans to Teach AI What Not to Do
Alec_Coughlin · x · 2026-09-21
At the Primary VC Summit, Etched co-founder and CEO Gavin Uberti explained why he hires 40-year industry veterans ("legends"): not to teach AI what works, but to say "don't do that — we tried it, here's exactly how it failed."
Key points:
- AI learns what an organization is designed to teach it. Feeding it both successes and failures beats successes alone.
- Pair a 30+ year veteran with an AI-native new hire: AI can't change their ages, but can make both "younger and older at the same time" — giving veterans modern tooling and inheriting hard-won lessons for newcomers.
- The author proposes "E-shaped is the new T-shaped": breadth now means accumulated lessons, not just lateral skills.
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