Long Lake Co-Founder Taubman Says AI Means Hiring More People
More productive workers keep customers longer, enjoy their jobs more, and become worth hiring, not firing.
David Senra · Bringing AI to the Real Economy | Alexander TaubmanThe familiar suspicion is that when technologists team up with buyout money, they buy an ordinary business, gut it, and replace people with AI to cut costs. Alexander Taubman, co-founder of Long Lake, a firm that buys established American service businesses, was answering that suspicion when he laid out the opposite case.
He argues that if workers become more productive, you want more of those workers, not fewer. In his words, “You obviously want more of them.”
He describes the view as positive sum, meaning gains for workers and owners together, not cuts. He ties it to his belief in AI abundance.
What he means is simple arithmetic. In homeowner association management, the business of running subdivisions and condominiums, where Long Lake started and now owns more than 20 companies out of close to 40 total, Taubman says AI can make a worker 50 percent more productive, able to handle 50 percent more clients with better service. That worker keeps customers longer and helps the business grow faster, so the worker is more valuable, not less.
His hypothetical makes the point. If a salesperson with AI help could do triple quota, Taubman argues, you would not want one third as many salespeople. You would want as many of them as you can hire.
Across its longest held businesses, he says, the firm is adding heads and reports job growth. Part of the reason, he argues, is that the job gets better. AI removes about 30 percent of the work that is drudgery, like answering routine emails and entering data, and leaves more of the customer facing work people enjoy.
He says team members have told him, “I don’t feel like I’m working anymore.”
That becomes a hiring edge, Taubman argues. He wants Long Lake companies to stand out as employers wherever they operate, because workers with better tools and better jobs are less likely to leave for a competitor down the street. The flywheel, as he describes it, is that the best tools attract the best people, who deliver better service, grow faster, retain customers better, make more money, and can be paid more. He notes the model is only a couple of years old and still has to prove that it works.
Questions people ask
Has this happened with past technologies, where automation led to more jobs?
Economists often find that major productivity tools eventually create more work, even if specific tasks disappear. Spreadsheets eliminated much manual bookkeeping but created far more financial analysis, and ATMs did not end bank tellers because branches shifted to sales and advice. The painful part is the transition, which can be hard for workers whose old tasks vanish.
What boring work is AI actually taking away?
In Taubman’s companies, it is routine office friction: reading long email threads, drafting replies, copying information between systems, and entering data. He says that kind of work is about 30 percent of the job. What remains is visiting customers, solving problems, and winning new business.
Why would software alone keep workers from quitting?
Taubman’s argument is that people prefer an easier job that pays better and stay where they have it. If one homeowner association manager offers software that turns an hour of email into minutes, and the rival across town does not, workers will gravitate to the first one. Lower turnover then improves service, which helps keep customers.