Last fall, Howie Liu, CEO and co-founder of Airtable, arrived at a board meeting with an urgent realization: If Airtable, a maker of collaboration software, wanted to stay relevant, it needed to significantly rethink itself. "We started to feel like the incumbent instead of the disruptor and risked becoming one of the dinosaurs," Liu said.

The board agreed, and Liu sprinted to put a plan into place. In June, Airtable launched its new product: an AI-powered software for making apps. He describes the motivating force behind his decision to alter his company's direction as a profound sense of paranoia. "Maybe it's not the most psychologically healthy way to live," he conceded. Liu then offered a justification: He thinks he's in wonderful company. "The founders I admire—even Zuck at the very top—are constantly paranoid."