SXSW 2026 had hundreds of panels. I only made it to three of them at the Fast Company Grill before the bars opened at 12:30, but the ones I caught painted a surprisingly coherent picture of where business is headed. Not the "AI will replace everything" panic you see on LinkedIn every morning. Something more nuanced. Across conversations featuring Prashanth Chandrasekar (CEO of Stack Overflow), Peter Smart (CXO of Fantasy), futurist Sam Jordan from Future Today Strategy Group, Yeti's Bill Neff, Huckberry's Ben O'Meara, and ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski, a single thread kept surfacing: the organizations winning right now are the ones that know exactly who they are.
That sounds simple. It is anything but.
Here is what I took away from a morning at the Fast Company Grill, and what it means for anyone running a business or leading a marketing team right now.
Table of Contents
1. Coherence Is the New Competitive Advantage
Coherence Is the New Competitive Advantage
The first panel I caught that morning featured Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow, alongside Peter Smart, Chief Experience Officer at digital product agency Fantasy, and Sam Jordan, Head of Computing and Emerging Technology at Future Today Strategy Group (the foresight firm founded by Amy Webb). Jordan was also previewing a standalone SXSW presentation she would deliver later in the week on what she called "inverted pipelines." Together, they made a point I have not been able to shake since: the companies accelerating right now are not the most well-funded, the largest, or even the most technically sophisticated. They are the most coherent.
The metaphor that landed hardest came from an unexpected source: Pirates of the Caribbean. Remember Jack Sparrow's compass, the one that points toward whatever you want most? In one of the sequels, Sparrow does not know what he wants, and the compass spins aimlessly, sending him in every direction at once. Jordan applied it directly to corporate leadership:
"I think of this with a lot of companies right now. A lot of companies are quite aimless. They don't really know what they want to become. When I think of resilient organizations, I think of companies like Berkshire Hathaway, and I think of the Catholic Church, and I think of the US Military. You wouldn't describe them as agile. But they are opinionated, and they do have a vision."
You would never call those organizations "agile." But they have something more valuable. They have a clear purpose. And because their fundamental mission does not waver, they can adapt how they deliver value without losing sight of why they exist. As Peter Smart from Fantasy put it: "I am a designer. The purpose of a designer is to imbue value into a product. How a designer has shown up in the world one hundred years ago, fifty years ago, ten years ago has fundamentally changed. If you are very clear on your purpose, then how you deliver that value can change. The fundamental dogma doesn't change, but how we do it changes."
This insight reframes the entire AI leadership conversation. The question is not "How do we use AI?" It is "What is our purpose, and how does AI serve it?" Without that clarity, companies end up doing what the panelists described as "hoovering up answers" from their teams and aggregating them into an incoherent patchwork. The result is a lack of direction that no amount of AI tooling can fix.
For anyone leading digital marketing strategy, this distinction is critical. The tools are proliferating faster than anyone can evaluate them. But tools without strategic coherence just create expensive noise.
The Stack Overflow Playbook: From "Code Red" to Category Leader
The most compelling case study of the day came directly from Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow. The platform has been the dominant knowledge base for technology professionals for nearly two decades, with a community of 100 million contributors. When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, it leveraged that very data. Chandrasekar described what happened next:
"In 2022, when ChatGPT came out, we realized that all the data that we had generated through human contributions on our platform was now being used by them and other AI companies. It was absolutely jarring, because you have to then figure out: what is the mission and purpose of your organization? Why do you exist?"
What happened next is a masterclass in AI leadership strategy, and a playbook any organization facing disruption should study closely.
Rather than reacting defensively, Chandrasekar treated the crisis as a "refounding moment." Drawing from prior experience navigating the cloud disruption at Rackspace (where he previously served as SVP), he carved out roughly 10% of the company as an autonomous innovation team. This team operated with:
Complete autonomy from the existing business
Different incentives and success metrics
A hard deadline: January to July 2023
CEO-led product development: "I personally ran product at that time," Chandrasekar said, "because I think it's very difficult to delegate something as fundamental as what's going on."
The results were transformative. First, Stack Overflow established data licensing partnerships with OpenAI, Google, and major cloud hyperscalers, securing the company's financial foundation. Second, they noticed that enterprise customers were using their private "Stack Overflow for Teams" APIs to power AI agent experiments. That insight led to the development of a product called Stack in Tunnel, a knowledge intelligence layer that serves as an authoritative context source for enterprise AI agents.
Chandrasekar's summary was blunt: "This world is just continuing to accelerate. We're talking less than ten percent adoption across the world. This is technology. Get used to it."
He also shared the mantra his team adopted, which captures the required mindset perfectly: Fast, Focused, and Fearless.
"Fast, because things are constantly changing, so you're constantly updating your assumptions. Focused, because scattered efforts produce nothing. And fearless, because you may have to completely redefine your company while you're learning about all these new things."
For anyone who has not read Carol Dweck's Mindset, Chandrasekar called it essential reading for this moment: "It tells you it's nothing personal to you. You just need to be okay with being wrong, because a lot of your assumptions are going to be proven untrue."
Three Pipelines Being Inverted by AI
One of the most intellectually rigorous segments came from Sam Jordan, who heads the Computing and Emerging Technology practice at Future Today Strategy Group. Jordan, who also authors the "Future of Computing" section of FTSG's annual Tech Trends Report (downloaded over a million times each year), was previewing a standalone SXSW presentation she would deliver later in the week. She identified three fundamental "pipelines" that AI is inverting, and the framework stuck with me more than almost anything else I heard that day.
The Build Pipeline. The traditional sequence of research, build, and test is being upended by simulation and virtual prototyping. When you can model outcomes digitally before committing resources, the entire order of product development changes. This reshapes the skills required at every stage.
The Discovery Pipeline. How we learn about the world is fundamentally changing. She drew a sharp parallel to the 1960s:
"The 1960s were so chaotic. Vietnam, multiple wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidents assassinated, we went to the moon. There were so many things going on on the surface. It was very easy to get distracted. But the companies that won realized it wasn't those headlines you had to pay attention to. It was a fundamental order of work and identity that was changing."
The key example: public reaction to Vietnam was fundamentally different from the reaction to Korea, largely because television changed the pipeline of trust between institutions and the public. Today, AI is doing the same thing to how we discover and validate information.
The Talent Pipeline. This is the one that should concern every leader. For most of human history, developing talent followed a specific pattern: juniors do work, make mistakes, get corrected, build character and skills, and eventually become leaders. As AI automates more junior-level work, we risk hollowing out not just skills but the friction that builds the character necessary for leadership.
Her warning was not to slow adoption. It was more nuanced than that: "The argument is not to forego the new pipeline. Absolutely, you should adopt more technology. The question I would ask leaders is: what are some of the byproducts of those old pipelines that we're going to lose? Sometimes friction is good. Sometimes friction creates care. Sometimes efficiency is not always optimal."
Her parting line on the subject landed with the entire room: "Do not forego judgment for efficiency."
For marketing leaders specifically, this maps directly to how we develop talent on our teams. If AI handles the campaign setup, the reporting, and the initial analysis, where do junior marketers develop judgment? This is a question every agency and in-house team needs to answer deliberately, not accidentally.
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The Three R's Framework for Leading Through Disruption
For anyone looking for a practical AI disruption strategy, Peter Smart from Fantasy offered the "Three R's" framework that deserves serious attention: Reorganize, Rally, and Realize.
Reorganize. Start by carving out a small, resilient pilot team. Smart was specific about what kind of people belong on it: those who understand the technology, who can see adjacent possibilities (he gave the provocative example of Nike and One Medical eventually converging), and critically, who are comfortable with the idea that their current role might not exist in two years.
"The group of individuals for whom, if the answer is 'Hey, in this new future my job doesn't exist anymore,' they're okay with that. Because they have the resiliency to understand that what I actually output is not who I am. It's my ability to creatively problem-solve, think differently, bring the inimitable human ability to conceive of the new."
Rally. Once that small team has developed and validated hypotheses (not unverified "visions," which Smart explicitly warned against as "dangerous"), use their findings to rally the next increment of the organization. The key word is cascading. You do not transform an entire company overnight. You do it in waves, each one building on validated learning from the last.
Realize. Execute the transformation in measured stages. Smart was emphatic that attempting full organizational change simultaneously causes "ontological shock," a term that perfectly describes what happens when you rip the foundation out from under people without giving them something stable to stand on.
This framework stands in direct contrast to the "move fast and break things" mentality. It is deliberate, empathetic, and grounded in evidence. Smart placed the burden squarely on leadership: "You cannot defer the weight of responsibility to be the individuals who are creating the conditions for clarity and coherence for your company. That is job number one as a leader. And job number two is to lead with empathy."
His closing remark captured the stakes: "A team of three people using AI video models can compete with major Hollywood studios and have their content bought by Netflix. The size of your team is no longer a benefit. How well-resourced you are is no longer a benefit. The new agility is coherence."
Brand Authenticity: What Yeti and Huckberry Understand That Most Brands Miss
The second panel, "Patience Is a Virtue: Why Slow-Burn Brand Strategies Win" at the Fast Company Grill, shifted gears entirely. It featured Bill Neff, Head of Marketing at Yeti, and Ben O'Meara, Chief Brand Officer at Huckberry, moderated by Jeff Beer, Senior Staff Editor at Fast Company. The underlying theme was identical to the first panel: coherence and brand authenticity built through patience.
When Beer asked about measuring ROI on patience in brand building, Bill Neff's response was immediate: "You said the word ROI and that's like a bad word."
Not because ROI does not matter. Because treating brand building as a short-term return calculation misses what actually builds durable value. Neff described how Yeti treats their communities like friendships:
"Very rarely do you meet someone for the first time and you're like best friends now. There's an evolution of getting to know each other. And that's how it takes on for us. In our communities, the fishing community was the first one we connected with. All these other communities that came along were not something that happened overnight. It was slow, it was listening, it was getting to know each other."
For the first decade, Yeti's marketing focused almost entirely on product durability: 500-pound men, grizzly bears attacking coolers. Once brand awareness reached a critical mass, they pivoted to telling the stories of the people and communities that inspired them. Neff shared how their 12-year relationship with the Malloy brothers, who serve as their "north star" in the surfing community, exemplifies this long-term approach. Twelve years ago, it started with simply "running up a blank, just getting to know that community and making sure that our product is relevant."
The discipline here is remarkable. When evaluating whether to enter a new market or community, Neff's guiding question is not "how big is the market?" It is "is the product going to make their time better out there doing these things? If it isn't a fit for us, we pass," regardless of revenue potential. This brand authenticity approach keeps them grounded while the market pushes toward trend-chasing.
The lesson for marketers is uncomfortable but important. In an era of quarterly pressure and attribution modeling, the brands building the most lasting value are the ones willing to invest in relationships that may not produce measurable returns for years.
Linking Out to Competitors and Other "Sacrilege" That Works
Ben O'Meara's approach at Huckberry pushes this philosophy even further. Their email newsletter regularly links out to other brands, products, and content creators, including direct competitors. As Beer noted, this is "sacrilege in e-commerce 101."
But the results speak for themselves. By providing genuine value to subscribers rather than treating every touchpoint as a conversion opportunity, Huckberry achieves higher open rates and generates unique data on customer interests that competitors who hoard attention simply cannot access. O'Meara was candid about how this evolved:
"If I'm honest, that wasn't necessarily our initial intent. It started with: how do we want to speak to people like our customers? And it's now very proactive for us in terms of creating real data and using that, as opposed to so much consumer data."
Both brands extend this philosophy to physical retail. O'Meara described Huckberry's stores as gathering spaces first, retail spaces second: "They're coming in and hanging out. They're walking home from work, having a beer. Not even buying stuff. They're coming in because they've made friends with the people who work there." This is the opposite of conversion-optimized retail design. And it is working.
The through-line connecting this brand panel to the morning's AI leadership discussion is unmistakable. Coherence. Knowing who you are. Building for the long term instead of optimizing every interaction for immediate extraction.
For business leaders wrestling with AI-driven marketing strategy, the Yeti and Huckberry stories are a reminder that technology changes the tools, but it does not change what makes humans trust a brand.
AI for Good: ElevenLabs and the One Million Voices Initiative
The last panel before lunch, "How AI Is Restoring the Human Voice" at the Fast Company Grill, was the most emotionally powerful experience I have had at any conference. It centered on ElevenLabs' "One Million Voices" initiative, a program providing free voice restoration technology to people who have lost their voice due to ALS, throat cancer, or other conditions.
The panel featured Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, and Rebecca Gayheart Dane, whose husband Eric Dane collaborated with ElevenLabs on voice restoration before his passing. The session was moderated by Kc Ifeanyi of Fast Company. Rebecca's presence alone made the conversation deeply personal, far removed from the typical tech conference pitch.
The technology works through a three-step process:
Acquiring a sample. The AI can recreate a voice from minimal audio, not just professional recordings. Old voicemails, home videos, even brief phone conversations can provide enough data. This accessibility is what makes the technology transformative for anyone facing voice loss.
Fine-tuning. A team of volunteers, pathologists, and specialists refine the model to capture the individual's unique cadence, intonation, and personality. Rebecca described hearing her husband Eric's restored voice: "It sounded exactly like him. It was a really emotional moment."
Deployment. The voice is made available on accessible devices like Tobii eye-tracking systems, allowing daily use for communication.
What struck me most was not the technology itself, but the infrastructure of human support surrounding it. ElevenLabs has built a network of pathologists, editors, and volunteers who guide users through one of the most difficult periods of their lives. Someone who sends a voice sample on Monday can have their restored voice by Thursday or Friday. The urgency matters because, as Rebecca pointed out, "It's a time-sensitive issue, and you never know exactly when it's going to happen."
As Staniszewski explained, the initiative's mission extends well beyond the technology: "Over the last year, we couldn't be more inspired by the individuals that are reclaiming their voices. Now, through incredible partnerships, these efforts are being taken to a new level."
The initiative currently works with 7,000 individuals and over 700 partner organizations across 49 countries, including hospitals, foundations like Bridging Voice and the Scott-Morgan Foundation, and universities. A companion docu-series, "11 Voices," tells the stories of people whose lives have been changed: a father reconnecting with his sons, a community worker inspiring others, and a bride reading her wedding vows in her own voice for the first time. ElevenLabs has also written about honoring Eric Dane's legacy and advancing the initiative at SXSW.
Rebecca's closing words cut through all the day's strategic frameworks and business analysis: "This is the best example of how AI can be used for good. A lot of people are cautious around AI. But this is so positive. It's going to give one million people voices who really need it. That will change their dynamic and relationships for the better."
What This All Means for Business Leaders and Marketers
Sitting with these three panels collectively, four threads weave together into something worth paying attention to.
Coherence over capability. Chandrasekar, Peter Smart, and Sam Jordan made the case that small, coherent teams are outperforming large, well-resourced organizations. As Smart put it, a team of three people using AI video models can now compete with Hollywood studios. The differentiator is not access to technology. It is clarity of purpose.
Patience over performance metrics. Bill Neff and Ben O'Meara are building brands at Yeti and Huckberry that will endure precisely because they resist the temptation to optimize every interaction. Their brand authenticity is not a strategy. It is an identity.
Frameworks over panic. The Three R's (Reorganize, Rally, Realize) provide a structured AI disruption strategy that does not require burning everything down. Leaders need hypotheses, not visions. Evidence, not pipe dreams.
Humanity over hype. Mati Staniszewski and Rebecca Gayheart Dane showed us that ElevenLabs' One Million Voices initiative is proof that AI's most profound applications are not about efficiency or scale. They are about restoring something fundamentally human.
For anyone leading marketing or business strategy in 2026, the takeaway from these panels converges on a single actionable truth: invest in knowing who you are before investing in what tools to use. The technology is accelerating. The fundamentals of trust, purpose, and genuine human connection are not.
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FAQs
What were the key takeaways from the SXSW 2026 Fast Company Grill panels?
The three panels I attended at the Fast Company Grill covered AI leadership coherence (clear strategic vision over democratic aggregation), brand authenticity through patient community building, practical frameworks for navigating AI disruption, and ethical AI applications like ElevenLabs' voice restoration for people with disabilities.
How did Stack Overflow respond to the AI disruption from ChatGPT?
CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar treated ChatGPT as a "refounding moment." He carved out 10% of the company as an autonomous innovation team with different incentives and a six-month sprint from January to July 2023, personally leading product development. This produced data licensing partnerships with OpenAI and Google, plus a new enterprise product called Stack in Tunnel for AI agent knowledge management.
What is the ElevenLabs One Million Voices initiative?
One Million Voices is an ElevenLabs program providing free voice restoration to one million people who have lost their voice due to ALS, throat cancer, or other conditions. The technology recreates a person's unique voice from minimal audio samples (even old voicemails) and deploys it on accessible devices. The program currently serves 7,000 individuals through 700 partner organizations globally.
What is the Three R's framework for AI disruption?
The Three R's framework consists of Reorganize (form a small pilot team of adaptable people), Rally (validate hypotheses and build organizational buy-in through evidence), and Realize (cascade changes through the organization in measured stages). It emphasizes incremental transformation over sudden organizational overhaul.
How did Yeti and Huckberry approach brand building differently?
Both brands prioritized long-term community relationships over immediate ROI. Yeti spent 12 years building trust in the surfing community through the Malloy brothers partnership. Huckberry links to competitors in their newsletter, which builds subscriber trust and generates unique customer interest data. Both over-invest in physical retail as community gathering spaces rather than conversion-optimized stores.
Originally published at mattkundodigitalmarketing.com
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