- Podcast
Becoming AI-native in partnership teams, with Keith Posehn of Zorz
Zorz's Keith Posehn explains three levels of AI adoption and why people who build their own AI tools will lead in affiliate and publisher work.
Episode from The Partnership Economy Podcast. Summarised by the AffHouse newsroom from the full episode. How we work →
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On The Partnership Economy Podcast, the host, who works at impact.com, notes that most people still use AI tools as a search engine, then talks to Keith Posehn, whose business has gone from marketing consulting to an AI services and infrastructure company, about moving from using AI tools to building with them.
In this episode
Posehn sees three levels of AI use: superficial (asking ChatGPT questions), integrated (custom chatbots, your own data, MCPs) and native, where AI is a fundamental part of how the business operates and exists (1:40).
He argues against waiting for a top-down rollout, citing a new saleswoman at a publisher-space company who arrived with a Claude Code subscription, built her own sales tools from day one and is "outperforming everybody" (4:05).
He says agency has two dimensions, intrinsic and extrinsic, and that AI-native people now choose employers by their willingness to give them token budgets (10:05).
In partnerships, he sees two camps, "very much AI native and very much just not"; a Chrome extension can be built "inside of an hour" and a cashback site in a day (16:19).
He expects people in the partnership economy to move from arbitrage or monetisation-first thinking to product-first thinking (17:33).
He says only in the last 3 months has AI software produced output of consistent quality you can ship, though he still reviews everything (22:32).
Episode from The Partnership Economy Podcast by impact.com, published on YouTube.