A Practical Guide to Becoming an AI-first Company – Ash Fontana

The term and concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is prevalent now to the point where you can’t escape it. CSOs are constantly confronted with the idea that if your company doesn’t get a handle on AI soon, it’ll be left behind. As commonplace as the idea is, however, there is no clear and easy plan on how to begin incorporating it into your business.

Ash Fontana, one of the most recognized startup investors in the world after launching online investing at AngelList, has taken this challenge into his own hands to write a highly-practical, step-by-step guide on becoming an AI-forward company, regardless of your current resources, trajectory, industry or any other aspect of your company you think may be a barrier.

Wherever more accurate predictions for a business is becoming increasingly important. AI will play a major force and the organizations that lead in implementing the predictive power of AI, he argues, will win. This could be predicting the success of a new product, the risk of system failure, future demand, or whether a customer or employee might leave. Drawing from his 2021 book, The AI-First Company: How to Compete and Win with Artificial Intelligence, in this roundtable, Ash will share with us the ideas and steps in his process, including:

• Why AI and data network effects are the ultimate competitive advantage

• How anyone can use a Lean AI framework to build an AI system

• How to create and embed AI-first teams throughout your organization

• How to mine and collect data to build data models—and what kind

• How to embed effective metrics to evaluate your models and adjust them accordingly

• How to make data drawn from AI systems a loop that leads you to new products and opportunities