Liza Mash Levin

Liza Mash LevinOct 16, 2026

Our events usually come with a full agenda. On Nov 3, the whole agenda is mahjong. 🌿 Liz Wilkes and I are hosting an afternoon in San Francisco for women in workplace and people roles, and it’s my favorite kind of networking: good company, a new game to learn together, and snacks and wine on the table. Beginners are welcome, but I can’t promise anyone will go easy on you! You’ll leave knowing a new game and a few more people who do what you do. We have 16 seats. Come play with us: link in the comments ⤵️

Liza Mash LevinOct 15, 2026

In the same week, a workplace leader might: Read a 40-page lease and find the clause that costs $2M. Build the exec deck that defends the real estate budget. Plan Thursday’s happy hour, including the oat milk. Chase a vendor contract nobody can find. Pick the software, roll it out, and train everyone on it. That is five jobs. Most of them have a team of one. And the math is getting worse. 89% of US companies now require 3+ days in the office. Only 14% are making major improvements to their space. (CBRE) Nearly 9 in 10 facility professionals say their responsibilities grew in the last three years. 94% work overtime. (MRI Software, ANZ) At the same time, everyone is being told to “adopt AI.” 92% of occupiers are piloting AI in real estate. Only 5% of companies say they have hit all their goals. (JLL) So here is the real job now: to be the bridge. Finance sees cost per seat. Employees see whether the office is worth the commute. The workplace leader is the only person who has to answer to both, in the same meeting. But I think we are making the same mistake with workplace teams that we made with IT 20 years ago: treating a strategic function like a cost center, then wondering why the strategy doesn’t stick. The people who win this next chapter won’t be the ones who learn to do five jobs faster. They will be the ones who: 1. Speak finance - Turn “people love the office” into utilization and cost per visit. 2. Let AI do the reading, not the deciding - Lease abstracts, contract summaries, vendor comparisons. 3. Consolidate the stack. Every extra tool is another login, another contract, another hat. The jack-of-all-trades workplace leader is not a compromise - It is the new job description. We just haven’t given them the budget, the tools, or the title to match. If you’re in workplace, real estate, or facilities, how many hats are you wearing right now? #workplace #facilities #futureofwork #ai

Liza Mash LevinOct 15, 2026

UI stopped being a moat for software companies this year. That's hard for me to say, because we've put years into ours. What changed my mind is how people use their tools now. They have ChatGPT or Claude open all day. When they open anything else at work, they expect to type what they want and have it happen. If they have to click through four menus to find a report, they're annoyed before they get there. Buyers are moving the same way. Futurum surveyed 830 IT decision-makers this spring: 41% plan to cut the number of apps they run, and only about 20% still prefer buying best-of-breed tools. They named AI as the main reason for the consolidation, more than cost. If your product doesn't connect to the rest of their stack, you're on the list to cut. And any decent team can now rebuild an interface with an LLM in a few days. The design work that used to protect you can be copied fast. So I've been asking myself where the real advantage sits - I believe it is the data we've built up across our customers, which nobody can scrape, and the work the product actually does for people once they ask for something. The playbook I'm betting on: Kill friction. Fewer clicks. Ask, and it's done. Live inside the tools people already use. Then win on what only you know. #founder #tech #ux