Most of the businesses we look at have never used AI. They are profitable companies run for decades on paper, fax, and hard-earned judgment. Assessing them is the opposite of auditing a startup's AI claims: management can't tell you where AI would help, because they don't know what the technology can do, and there's no reason they should.

The new essay covers how I work in that situation: tracing the work itself before mentioning technology, splitting every improvement into an AI lens and a without-AI lens, and why the roadmap gets decided jointly with the management team rather than handed to them.

Read it here: Finding AI Opportunities in Companies That Have Never Used AI

It's part two of a pair. Part one, on diligence when a target does ship AI, is here.

Roy