10% of Employees Are Living in the Future: Mirko Gropp, GM of Technology at The Living Company

Georgie Healy talks to Mirko Gropp, General Manager of Digital, Data and Technology at The Living Company, live from Dreamforce day three. The Living Company owns, develops and operates student housing, build-to-rent apartments and senior living across Australia, with around 2,000 people and about $17 billion in assets by Mirko's count. Mirko's take on the week: Salesforce going headless means the UI, long the moat for software companies, is no longer the point, and Claude arriving inside Salesforce lets his team ask plain-language questions of their cases. He says agentic coding lets him build in 3 months what used to take a year, with 2 people who never touch the code. They get into how a company rolls AI out when a small group of super users does most of the heavy lifting, and the HR question nobody has answered yet: how do you reward someone who is 10x more productive? Mirko explains why students hate email and voice, how The Living Company will build its first agent for senior living, and why most customer chat doesn't need a top-tier model. If you have a custom tool you assumed was too hard to build, this one is the push. Mirko's advice is to describe the outcome you want, let the tool walk you there, and be a critical, proactive builder. Captions 00:00 Cold open 01:30 Welcome back: the final Dreamforce interview 01:39 Headline: AI agents don't need screens 03:29 Headline: Headless 360 and the 5% AI value gap 05:27 Headline: How AI ends email and password fatigue 08:59 Mirko joins live from Dreamforce 10:22 The Living Company and the headless shift 11:49 Building in 3 months with 2 people who never touch code 12:51 Onboarding 10,000 students with 80% old school automation 13:53 What chatbot questions reveal, plus Cowork inside Salesforce 15:14 Rolling AI out to staff and the super users 16:56 The HR question: employees who are 10x more productive 17:20 Students trying to jailbreak the agent 18:13 Senior living: building the first agent 19:44 Designing for Gen Z and seniors 23:11 Tone of voice and rebuilding the bot with Salesforce 24:18 Shipping 5x to 10x faster than 10 years ago 25:47 Rapid fire: will AI disrupt property? 27:52 Predicting who's leaving and filling rooms early 28:40 You don't need Fable for everything 30:04 Where The Living Company goes next 32:16 Mirko's advice for builders 34:28 Outro: Attention is All I Need In the Blink of AI is made possible by our wonderful partners: Deel Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone ✨ Connect with Georgie Healy Weekly Substack: https://georgiehealy.substack.com/ Linkedin:   / georginahealy   Instagram:   / georginahealytech   The Day One Network In The Blink of AI is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors. Sign up to get your weekly insights into the up-and-coming AI startups: https://dayone.fm/newsletter Follow our socials Linkedin:   / dayonefm   Instagram:   / dayone.fm   TikTok:   / dayone.fm