AI Won’t Save Your Business—It’ll Just Make the Outcome Arrive Faster.
AI Can’t Rescue You From Bad Fundamentals
During the dot-com era, Homer Simpson founded Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net. Like so many others, he went out of business almost as quickly as he started. Technically, he was roughed up by Bill Gates—but let’s be honest, nothing could save a company that “moved so fast it was hard to tell what it did”.
AI is finally a game-changing business tool. A year ago, ChatGPT was still blabbing incoherently. Now tools like Claude are making early ChatGPT feel like a toy. AI now sits at the center of real business intelligence and processes. But if your company’s fundamentals are broken, AI can’t save you. AI might be the most powerful tool we’ve ever had, but it isn’t a strategy.
Imagine building a complete indirect channel analysis—performance over the trailing 12 months, detailed financials, and an improvement plan—in two hours while multitasking. Or analyzing your entire funnel, from impressions to cash—with both an executive readout and a full tactical drill-down—in under 30 minutes. Or building an entire pricing management platform in 48 hours. Not a prototype—a working platform more robust than some of the $100K “enterprise solutions” currently being sold with a straight face. We’ve achieved all of these. It’s not incremental improvement, it’s a step change.
Yes, business acumen is still required to challenge outputs and refine conclusions. If you’re not getting at least five “good catch” per chat your analysis is still living in fantasy land. But that’s exactly the point. You’re no longer wasting time building slides or fixing spreadsheets—you’re spending your energy actually thinking. AI handles the mechanics; you handle the judgment.
On the flip side, watch out for the snake oil. I’ve yet to find a so-called “specialized AI tool” that outperforms general-purpose generative AI. HubSpot has been particularly underwhelming. They require significant effort to set up, solve narrow problems, and still manage to make plenty of mistakes. No surprises, if you can’t claim being an “AI company” good luck with your valuation. The result? A flood of half-baked solutions masquerading as innovation.
Save yourself the time and money. Start with generative AI before exploring specialized tools. Many of these companies won’t be around in 12–24 months anyway.
Why Can’t AI Save You?
Let’s say your COGS is 10% higher than your competitors. If you’re an early AI adopter, maybe you squeeze out a 10% from your SG&A. Great—you’ve bought yourself some time. But any halfway competent company will catch up. And then you’ll be right back where you started: structurally uncompetitive but with better charts.
Remember Adam Neumann and WeWork? A so called tech company—more specifically, a “physical social network.” Past the smoke and mirrors, their cost per square foot (adjusted for tenant turnover) exceeded what they could charge. No amount of technology can fix that. If you’ve read From EBITDA to Exit, you’ll remember the “sleazy friend” Adjusted EBITDA. WeWork had one better, “Community Adjusted EBITDA”— a fictional profitability metric in a future where locations required no corporate overhead, no marketing, and no SG&A. Even with today’s AI WeWork would have imploded, of course with fancier dashboards.
Post-Chapter 11, WeWork has achieved positive EBITDA by shedding unproductive locations and enforcing strict cost control. They fixed their fundamentals. Now—and only now—can AI actually help: improving customer targeting, identifying higher-value segments, extending lease durations, or lowering acquisition costs. AI is a force multiplier—not a bailout plan. So the playbook is simple:
Fix your fundamentals: competitive product, clear go-to-market, and a healthy cost structure.
Implement generative AI—yes, I recommend Claude. Everything else still feels like a toy in comparison.
AI accelerates what already exists. Healthy Business? AI will make you faster, sharper, and scalable. Broken Business? AI will rip the band-aid. As Adam Sandler put it in the Romano Tours SNL sketch: if you’re sad back home, we can’t fix that—you’ll still be your same sad self while vacationing in Italy.