The Blank Canvas Problem is slowing AI adoption across America | Gusto Co-Founder Edward Kim

Most people still use AI as a glorified search engine. Edward Kim (Co-Founder and Head of Technology at Gusto) thinks that's the blank canvas problem, and it's what's slowing AI adoption across America.

In this episode of Navigators, Paul Klein sits down with Edward to talk about the blank canvas problem, what AI adoption really looks like in the real economy, and what it takes to build a SaaS company today.

They also talk about Gusto Cofounder, a new AI agent that runs the operational work of a small business and only checks in when it needs you.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Intro

03:39 Prototyping a product in an airport with Claude Code

06:06 Shipping in 10 weeks with no Jira and 9-minute code reviews

10:05 The blank canvas problem and why it stalls AI adoption

12:09 The headless future: running your business by text

13:50 Why 99.9% of people still use AI as a search engine

15:21 Building AI for the small businesses ChatGPT forgot

25:22 Why everyone on the team is a builder now

Browserbase gives AI agents a browser to operate in. Navigators is our series of conversations with the people building the agentic future.

Checkout Navigators on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.