What happens when AI makes code faster to write than it is to govern?

In this episode of Futureproof, Xano CEO Prakash Chandran sits down with Alex Pape, EVP and Chief Technology & Product Officer at AssetMark, a wealth management technology platform serving independent financial advisors. Alex has spent his career at the intersection of investing, product, and technology, from building a direct to consumer investing platform at The Motley Fool to leading product for BlackRock's Aladdin Wealth Tech before joining AssetMark to lead its technology and product organization.

Together, they explore why the biggest technology shifts often happen below the surface, and what it takes to modernize a 30 year technology estate without putting the business on pause. Alex breaks down AssetMark's three part AI strategy, including Nitro, the company's internally built AI development harness that encodes its architectural principles directly into the software development process. They dig into how AssetMark says it increased development velocity roughly 6x, why traditional measures like story points break down in an AI powered development environment, and how to decide when to optimize for speed versus experimentation. They close with Alex's framework for hiring adaptable "athletes" in a world where the boundaries between engineering and product are changing fast, and the question he uses to bring every technology decision back to its purpose: are our clients flourishing because of us?

Topics covered include:

• The real transformation happens underneath: Why fragmented data and disconnected systems can matter more than flashy new features, and why AssetMark is rebuilding the foundation that allows advisors to spend more time with clients.
• When less product usage is a good thing: Why Alex does not see logins and engagement as the ultimate measure of success, and how making technology disappear can create a better advisor experience.
• Three jobs for AI: How AssetMark separates its AI strategy into AI for advisors, AI for software development, and AI for employees, with each tied back to a specific business outcome.
• The machine that builds the machine: Why AssetMark built Nitro instead of relying entirely on third party coding tools, and how encoding architectural principles into AI agents can give developers more freedom without giving up governance.
• How do you measure 6x?: Why story points stopped working as AI changed the amount of software an engineer could produce, and how AssetMark uses lines of code, pull requests, and cycle time as a proxy for development velocity.
• Hire athletes, not job descriptions: Why Alex looks for people who could become exceptional in a completely different role within months, and why adaptability, curiosity, and humility matter more as AI reshapes traditional disciplines.

Subscribe to Futureproof wherever you get your podcasts.

From Xano - The fastest way to create a production-ready backend for any app or agent. Xano unifies AI speed, code control, and visual clarity, so you never trade reliability for velocity. Sign up for free today.

What does digital transformation actually look like when your product is a physical home—and a leaky faucet can't be fixed with a line of code?

In this episode of Futureproof, Xano CEO Prakash Chandran sits down with Nikolaj Brammer, Chief Digital Officer at Heimstaden, one of Europe's largest residential real estate companies, managing tens of thousands of homes across multiple countries. Nikolaj's background isn't in technology — he came up through Bain & Company, Goldman Sachs, and Maersk before joining Heimstaden, where he's held roles across business development and commercial leadership before taking on the company's entire digital transformation.

Together, they explore what it actually looks like to digitize the operations of a physical business, why culture and mindset matter more than technology in making transformation stick, and how Heimstaden is building toward a future where a junior AI analyst can answer complex data questions in seconds. They also dig into the hardest part of any AI rollout — measuring real impact — and close with a candid conversation about the risk of outsourcing critical thinking to AI at the exact moment judgment matters most.

Topics covered include:

• The product is physical. The operations aren't.: Why the home itself doesn't need to change for a real estate company to undergo a meaningful digital transformation — and what that looks like in practice at scale.
• Culture before technology: Why the mindset and habits of an organization determine whether digital transformation actually sticks — and why Heimstaden's approach to even the smallest decisions creates the conditions for it.
• Three levels of AI value: From personal productivity to team-wide tools to full end-to-end workflow redesign — and how to find and prioritize the right use cases at each level.
• The measurement problem nobody has solved: Why proving that AI created a specific business outcome is harder than it sounds — and why judgment and storytelling end up being just as important as data.
• Outsource the work, not the thinking: Why both Nikolaj and Prakash have had to consciously pull back from delegating too much to AI — and why the risk of losing critical thinking is one of the most important conversations leaders should be having right now.

Subscribe to Futureproof wherever you get your podcasts.

From Xano - The fastest way to create a production-ready backend for any app or agent. Xano unifies AI speed, code control, and visual clarity, so you never trade reliability for velocity. Sign up for free today.

If AI can produce the deck, write the PRD, and draft the battle card—what's left for you to own?

In this episode of Futureproof, Xano CEO Prakash Chandran sits down with Paul Traficanti, Director of Product Marketing at Nextworld and writer behind the Substack newsletter Somebody Manage Me. Paul is a founder turned operator who has worked across gaming, direct-to-consumer, and enterprise SaaS—and he's been writing about something most AI conversations skip over: as AI takes over the visible work, the invisible human layer underneath becomes even more invisible. Together, he and Prakash explore what taste, judgment, and critical thinking actually look like in daily work, why AI-generated documents are creating a new kind of organizational noise, and how leaders can start making the invisible contributions of their teams visible again. They also dig into how hiring is changing when the floor has been raised, why meetings are shifting from document reviews to alignment conversations, and what it means that an LLM-written document is now being summarized by another LLM so no one has to read it.

Topics covered include:

• Taste as the new competitive advantage: Why the human decisions behind a prompt—what to say, to whom, and why—matter more than the polished output AI produces.
• The document graveyard problem: How AI-generated PRDs, battle cards, and decks are creating more content but less understanding, and why less is about to become more again.
• "Show me the prompt": A practical framework for cutting through AI slop by asking teammates what context they gave the model and why—and the water cooler test for whether they truly understand their own output.
• Hiring when the floor is raised: Why interview homework assignments no longer reveal much, and how companies are rethinking evaluation to test for critical thinking, not production skill.
• AI literacy gaps across functions: Why developers adopted AI fastest but sales and marketing teams are still catching up, and the emerging need for internal AI enablement roles.

Subscribe to Futureproof wherever you get your podcasts.

From Xano - The fastest way to create a production-ready backend for any app or agent. Xano unifies AI speed, code control, and visual clarity, so you never trade reliability for velocity. Sign up for free today.