06-24-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

Everyone is a builder now

AI tools have widened the ability to create new functionalities and new companies.

[Photo: Getty Images]

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.

When a natural disaster hits or a political crisis breaks out, you need to know where your employees are and reach them fast. We were paying $60,000 a year for a third-party tool to handle that. It didn’t fully work.

So someone on our people team built a replacement. Using Claude Code connected to Remote’s employment data, she put it together in three hours and 17 minutes for $216. That kind of tool used to require a specialist vendor, a procurement process, and months of setup. She’s not an engineer. She just knew the problem better than anyone and had the tools to act on it.

I didn’t ask her to do that. Nobody assigned it. She just built it.

She’s not an exception. Over the last year I’ve watched our HR and finance teams handle significantly more volume and complexity than before, with the same number of people. That’s only possible because they work differently now. They’re not waiting for someone else to........

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