Building with AI: Colton Hess on Agency, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Work

New Here@Haas hosts Rehan Panjwani and Sreya Ravi kick off their first episode with Colton Hess, founder of Activation Playbook.

Colton shares how building a sleep-tech startup at Haas unexpectedly led him to AI, vibe coding, and eventually helping others turn their ideas into working products. He talks about why learning to build with AI is less about becoming a technical expert and more about developing confidence, curiosity, and a greater sense of agency.

The conversation explores Colton’s entrepreneurial journey, his approach to using AI thoughtfully, the value of experimentation and failure, and how Haas and the broader Berkeley community shaped his path. He also shares practical advice for students, founders, and anyone learning how to navigate a rapidly changing AI landscape.

Episode Quotes:

On finding agency through AI

"These tools are remarkable. They just give you this incredible sense of agency and power and what you can create. And just at the time, Claude Code had just come out, and so I was just trying to understand this tool, and it felt like a secret I was in on at the time, and I kind of felt this pressure of, “I’ve got to tell my fellow MBAs about this,” all these people with these great ideas who maybe don’t have a technical background."

On using AI to focus on the human parts of work

"Okay, what, don’t we want AI to touch? What do we really wanna protect here? And what are maybe the parts of our job that we don’t like doing as much, that don’t feel human, that are tedious or boring or how can we find the areas where AI is good at those things and use it toward those? And generally, when you approach it like that, helping people focus on the most human parts of their work, which are generally the parts they like most, the most creative, the most human, then that’s where they’re much more likely to want to learn how to use these tools."

On learning AI without feeling like an expert

"We’re all learning as we go. The best engineers in the world feel like they can’t catch up. They feel like they’re behind. I view it as a moment of incredible opportunity to focus on trying to figure out how to use these tools, how do we use them in a thoughtful, ethical way, a way that feels right to us, a way that helps us feel more us, and to put more of our energy and ideas out into the world."

On taking advantage of the MBA experience

"But I think a more, like, a different approach to that answer is taking advantage of this two years where you’ve already decided to pause your career, you’ve already decided you’re not gonna make money during these two years, and there is never gonna be a lower cost of failure than these two years to just try things and fail and, and learn and pivot and iterate, and also to pay attention to what’s going on in industry."

On getting started with AI

"I like to tell people, I always say refuse to feel stupid. You know, like we said, we are all learning about this at the same time. All learning how to use these tools. So just refuse to feel stupid. Don’t let shame get in the way of trying things. I also like to tell people, if you can really clearly articulate a vision, if you can articulate the problem, right? These tools can do a lot of the work of helping turn that into a solution in collaboration with you, but then also helping to actually engineer and build the solution."

Show Links

• ⁠Colton Hess on LinkedIn
• ⁠Activation Playbook
• Colton Hess, MBA/MPH ’26 — Berkeley Haas
• Berkeley SkyDeck
• ⁠Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub (eHub)
• ⁠AI for Business Graduate Certificate — Berkeley Haas
• ⁠Why We Sleep — Matthew Walker