The Third Co-Founder: From Tool to Team Member

Start and scale with AI as a true team member: launch services fast, let models handle production work, and reserve human effort for strategy, taste, and client impact.

Sep 29, 2025 5m 7s

Gillian Salerno-Rebic and Maria Burke

Expert Insights

Gillian Salerno-Rebic and Maria Burke, founders of North + Form, redefine the future of professional services through their distinct approach to AI usage for software development. They challenge conventional infrastructure, evolving the idea of a co-founder by adapting AI capabilities beyond mere tools to indispensable team members.

Their perspective outlines a shift from treating AI as a peripheral asset to integrating it as a foundational component of the organizational infrastructure, handling diverse functions akin to those of multi-skilled coworkers.

Hear Gillian and Maria explain:

How AI can be employed as an operational infrastructure, rather than viewing it as just a tool, to fulfill the specialist roles usually covered by a traditional employee.
Their perspective of AI, such as Chat GPT and Gemini, illustrating it as a co-worker, a business partner, a research assistant, and an analysis assistant, fueling faster and higher-quality decisions.
The potential of AI to redefine traditional business models, making what were previously thought of as impossible or expensive strategies.
How the lack of AI awareness and adoption, rather than AI itself, poses a real danger for professionals, emphasizing that professionals must feel a sense of urgency to gain AI competence to maintain their competitive edge.
The crucial need for a balance between traditional skills and AI adoption, where professionals should leverage AI to enhance their skills rather than replace them. They emphasize the necessity of maintaining the human touch in the AI-powered world, preserving high-value interactions and refining AI's output through human judgment.

In three weeks, we were able to not only create our website, um, you know, develop our offerings, um, rightsize the materials and create, um, swag and whatnot. Thanks to AI... because we started with our, our third counterpart, um, the AI to create our business. ”We had a whole agency at our fingertips, truly. I think we're both using AI tools to kind of help us do our jobs faster again, to like, there's just two of us so that we can like give really that like enterprise level capacity services to our clients.

— Gillian Salerno-Rebic and Maria Burke, Founders, North + Form

THE NEW DEFAULT angle

Here's how software teams can leverage AI to reimagine professional services and team dynamics:

Embrace AI as operational infrastructure: Rather than using AI as a tool for specific tasks, think of it as a core operational element capable of undertaking diverse job roles.
Explore AI's multifaceted roles: Experiment with different AI technologies like Chat GPT for various roles, such as research and analysis assistants. Encourage individual team members to explore how AI can help them in their specific tasks, not just as a team resource.
Bridge the AI skills gap: Beware of the professional disadvantage that may occur due to the lack of AI knowledge. Stay at the forefront of the AI evolution by constantly learning and adopting new AI tools and practices.
Maintain a balance between AI and human abilities: While integrating AI, retain the importance of human skills and judgment in the workflow. Use AI as a force multiplier to ramp up human skills rather than replace them. Train your team to refine the output of AI with their professional judgement.
Foster an AI-ready culture: Reduce resistance to AI adoption by fostering an environment of curiosity, openness, and continuous learning. Encourage your team to view AI as their coworker and collaborator.
Harvest opportunities from AI adoption: Recognize the potential of AI to redefine traditional business models. Encourage your team to brainstorm and explore business models that were previously considered impossible or too expensive.