October 29, 2025

May Habib on Building Writer into a $2B+ Enterprise AI Platform

46 minutes

Writer CEO May Habib is building the future of enterprise AI. Born in Lebanon as the oldest of eight kids, May grew up navigating chaos, multiple languages, and cultures, skills that shaped her into a founder willing to challenge assumptions. After pivoting from Qordoba, she built Writer's own foundational models and spent a decade solving real AI problems for Fortune 500 companies. Now leading a $2B+ company, May shares her bold vision for where AI is headed, from self-evolving LLMs that proactively guide us to why work in 2030 will be unrecognizable.

What You'll Learn:

How growing up as the oldest of eight in a Lebanese family shaped May's leadership style

Why Writer focuses on highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services

The critical difference between generative AI and agentic AI

How self-evolving AI will proactively prompt you instead of waiting for commands

Why execution is going from scarce and expensive to abundant and on-demand

What the average knowledge worker's job will look like in 2030

Why narrow job specs are dead and career lattices are the future

The two disruptive forces that will make work unrecognizable in 30 years

Why May believes there's no AI bubble

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
01:50 Growing Up as the Oldest of Eight in an Immigrant Family
05:30 Why Language Shapes Who We Become
09:05 The Decision to Leave Finance and Start Qordoba
12:05 The Risky Pivot from Qordoba to Writer
17:45 What Problem Writer Actually Solves for Enterprise
21:05 Building Trust at Scale in Regulated Industries
24:30 How Writer Stays Maniacally Focused
28:10 Writer's Vision for Self-Evolving AI
35:00 Why Narrow Job Specs Are Dead
37:30 What Work Looks Like in 2030 and the Two Unknowns Shaping the Future
39:26 What Most People Misunderstand About AI
41:44 The Book That Changed May's Life
43:06 Is There an AI Bubble?
43:15 May's One-Word Mantra: Forward
43:49 How May Manages Stress
44:00 Beyond AI: What Excites May the Most