I recently came across an article written by a $100M+ home services CEO who laid out how his company is thinking about AI tooling. His stance is that for home services his job is to create a competitive advantage for his team. To do that, he doesn’t need to be in the software business.

Essentially, if the software that AI can build for his company doesn’t create a competitive advantage, he is going to buy vs build.

These were the decision gates that lead him to that conclusion.

The realization that he and other mid-sized CEO’s are concluding is that AI can really lead to strong ROI projects, but building software to replace common business software that already exists is underwhelming. In fact, custom software comes with many hidden costs and could represent a big risk within your company.

I’ve been experimenting with AI over the past several months. I have introduced you all to my AI agent and have since then built many AI powered workflows. I have even built a replacement to a very popular SaaS survey tool, using nothing but AI.

I am an experienced business owner and technologist. I know my way around a server room and have supported infrastructure for some of the largest companies on the planet. However, I have never fully coded an app. I am NOT a software developer. The interesting journey into development with AI is that I have to TRUST the code, and that makes me really nervous. As Warren buffet said, “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing”. And I think that is the perfect point mid-market CEO’s are finding out. Someone from their team may be great with AI, but they aren’t scrutinizing the code that makes the App function. They don’t version, performance tune, or perform penetration testing. They are just good at writing instructions and hoping that AI fixes the problem without creating another.

The value for AI in the workforce right now, isn’t replacing your technology stack with AI generated, custom apps. It’s identifying constraints that slow down your employees and solving for efficiency.

The market mover in these early days of AI is workforce enhancement. CIOs have an opportunity to clean communication and data inputs for their staff, paving the way for their employees to focus on meaningful work within the company. God created the best organic supercomputer on the planet and it’s located between our ears.

AI will be most disruptive, when AI builds from scratch. When AI can build an entire business without humans, then AI will have solved for the constraints that building for humans create. When that happens, tooling will be custom. Tooling will be code, not SaaS, no UX/UI. All that will exist is high dense information and flawless communication. Systems will then be optimized for the product and not for the human.

For pre-disruption businesses, AI is going to work alongside humans and optimize the workflow by providing clean inputs and automation. Allowing the human to focus on the problem solving aspect of their job and using their intelligence to create. When CIO’s can move the needle closer to pure human creativity, people will find purpose, the company will tap into ambition, and profit will flow.

So, is now the right time to invest in AI?

I would say it IS the right time to use AI. But use it to drive organizational change that unlocks the potential for your human workforce. Trying to replace your workforce is taking on a level of risk that event Warren Buffet would advise against.

Until next week,

—Jared

Text Me: 314.806.3912

High-stakes communications need precision and speed. Wispr Flow turns your spoken thinking into polished investor notes, board recaps, and executive summaries. It strips filler, formats numbers and lists, and preserves your tone — so what you paste is what you'd have spent an hour editing.

Use voice snippets for recurring formats: weekly updates, quarterly reports, stakeholder briefings. Consistent, professional, fast.

89% of messages sent with zero edits. Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

Try Wispr Flow free