I was part of an *ai* consortium. Before I joined it was four guys. One data scientist with a Ph.D. in engineering, not related to machine learning, but hey. A design thinking guy who has some impressive experience with Watson. An adjunct lecturer on design and design thinking. And the business dude, a distant connection from the earliest days of interactive marketing. They were THE FOUR. Their mission, training and education for *ai* in business. Um, about as unique as the offerings from Harvard, MIT, and Cornell. Let’s just say it’s a crowded field.

The Stealth Startup in *ai*

I am currently the CMO for another stealth startup working on many layers of *ai* and ML and AR and … Yadda yadda yadda. No one cares. If you think our marketing messages are having any splash in the hype cycle that is *ai* you’re kidding yourself. I connected with the *founder* and biz dev genius as I was contemplating leaving my job at Digital Realty Trust. We completed the massive task of building a net-new web presence, brand, and strategy for the merging of the number two and number five players in the global data center market, established and dominated by Equinix. Let’s combine our US company Digital Realty, and the UK company you’ve never heard of, to become “the largest owner of data centers in the world.” Confetti cannons all around when we launched in May of 2023. More awards followed for our team’s performance in doing the digital reboot in record time.

I reached out to the *founder* on LinkedIn to ask about his current role at a local *ai* powerhouse. He responded quickly, with a more intriguing message. He’d been laid off several months before and was in the process of launching an *ai* professional services group. “Wow. I’m guessing we, meaning ‘Digital Realty’ could really use your services, we should talk.” We talked a few days later, and my ideas spun up like a newly launched generative text thread with ChatGPT.

I Thought I Was the Big Prize

In our conversations it was clear, this consortium had not begun to thing about branding, marketing, or even a name. Hmm. That’s something I do well. Okay. They had a few promising leads. The founder turned me on to Apollo AI, a personal CRM and email campaign tool. Cool. Annddddd, I had this other possible client.

Over the course of the holidays we THE FIVE now started discussing the next steps on getting all of us fully billed. Meaning, the founder was trying to take care of his *data scientist* who needed a job, since he was laid off at the same time, from a different AI company in town. The founder, I was surprised to learn, was working four jobs. We all like to call it “fractional” but he was just not making ends meet with any of his ventures. The AI CONSORTIUM was the key to his plan. The company with no name and no marketing strategy and one other gaping hole that I wouldn’t discover until later.

I had a big client idea. This client was actually a consulting services firm for mid-sized businesses. They employed 100 fractional CMO’s who then worked for hundreds of companies in the 10 – 100 million dollar revenue range. Okay, we could work with that. What was this company’s *ai* strategy? Um, they didn’t really have one. They were putting on webinars about *ai* but had only gotten so far as naming a six-person AI Tiger Team. This was exciting to me. It was obviously exciting to the founder as well.

I was added to the Google business system, email, calendar, email signature, Google Slides for pitches, etc. And the ever-powerful Slack client. I was IN and we were off to the races. But, an odd thing happened along the way to the big pitch to the CMO goldmine. Only the founder seemed responsive on Slack. No one gave me any feedback on my presentation for the big day. No one. I was surprised, but undaunted as I made the pre-wire meeting with my contact in the CMO consulting company. We got a date. We congratulated each other on how good this was going to be.

The AI Switcheroo

Along the way to getting our *webinar* with the entire group of CMO’s set up, we got rerouted. Instead of meeting with 50 – 60 active CMO’s and sharing the good news of our partnership in AI, we were told we’d be meeting with the Tiger Team. Oh. Okay. I rolled with the body blow and kept my optimism high. The founder had undergone hair restoration surgery and looked like a ghoul, so it was going to be FOUR of THE FIVE. Me, the doctor of LLMs and the other two fellows. The meeting went as you might expect. The Tiger Team was skeptical and reticent to engage with us. They had ZERO practical AI experience. Yet, they were leading the AI efforts of the entire enterprise. Hmm. THE FOUR huddled after the zoom call that was end-of-day Friday and limited to 30 minutes.

“I don’t want to give them any of our slides,” said the adjunct. “We could’ve asked more open-ended questions and let them talk,” said the doctor of data. The other guy, a quiet type, was quiet. We agreed it had not gone as planned. I would put together plans for NEXT STEPS.

[Sorry, I skipped an important schism that came up between the four of the five, our hair-challenged leader was offline for a few weeks.]

AI Training & Webinars

When I joined the unnamed AI consortium I understood that their plan and platform was training and education. Lunch and learns for $5k. Okay. As I walked four of the five through my pitch deck, before the webinar was crushed by the CMO leadership, we reached a crescendo where the quiet fellow spoke up. “We need to decide what kinds of services we want to offer. We are training and education. We are not going to help them setup or deliver programs. That’s not what we do.”

Oh, shit. It was my turn to react. “These CMOs need executional support. Giving them a bunch of knowledge and a playbook and wishing them “good luck” not going to go over well. Without execution, these CMO’s could not give a flying fk about more education and training. They needed to get AI into motion this quarter.”

That’s not really what we do. The message was loud and clear. I spoke with the founder later in the day, from his recovery room. “I can take this LLC any direction I want. They don’t understand the full-scope of our services. We’re building the business as we go along.” Okay, I took the bait. I drove the show. I led the webinar with 7 rather than 70. I took the arrows for the missed expectations and the “not enough open-ended questions” feedback.

It was only a few days later when my Slack access was cut off and my consoritum email quit working. I texted the better but troubled founder.

No, actually, we did not. I withdrew my invitation. Allowed the now re-haired founder to grow and establish his consortium into something like AI leadership and training without execution. I was already having conversations with my new employer, a legitimate startup with funding and several bigger ideas in motion. A small crossover occured in one other networking group we were both a part of, with a Slack channel.

On that Slack channel, I sent the founder a message.

Of course, he would never by my friend again. He was an opportunist. My *white whale* of an employer, Digital Realty, and my CMO potential client, was enough for him to spend the $10 per month to let me be part of his secret cabala of ai for a few months.

Be Real, Be Honest, Be a Good Person

I wanted to call this fellow on the phone. I wanted to tell him that merely shutting someone out of a system was an awful way of firing them. I wanted to withdraw my NDA. But hey, I was going to be doing AI ENABLEMENT today, not training and education. We were going in different directions. I engaged the startup Iterativ.ai in further conversations and today I have been hired as the CMO of a group of people that is functioning like a team. I enjoyed two of the other three gentlemen. The adjunct was a pure assh*le so he will not be missed. As for the newly-haired founder, I do wish him luck. The training and education market is massively overbuilt at this point. Free courses, major universities offering two-month certificates, and now he had no marketing expertise at all. THE FOUR again, will have to find their own path forward in AI valhala.

In the hiring process, my new company also purchased the right to my content on Uber.la as well as the marketing team and business of Fluent Social. So, I think I made it out of the secret consortium okay. It was a painful process, finding a man to be more dark prince than a benevolent leader. I hope his new hair looks better than most examples I’ve seen on those late-night commercials about the guy says, “I’m even a customer myself.”

Moving forward, if you’re involved in any type of business, keep one major principle in mind: Be kind. Whatever the founder was going through personally, financially, medically, it did not give him an excuse to just turn off my connections with his team. Well, of course, he had the right, it was his brainchild after all. But it was not the honest thing to do. It was childish. Hurtful.

I’m a big boy. I appreciate you listening to my rant and my clapback against the consortium leader. He saw me as a big client opportunity, either my employer (largest data center owner in the world) or my prospective client (100 fractional CMOs). Either way, he handled himself like an inexperienced leader, not a vain balding executive looking to score in the gold rush of AI.

There’s enough room in the business of AI for all of us. Don’t be like this founder. And, if you’re looking for work in AI, beware of startup fever. It’s full of sharks and charlatans.

John McElhenney — let’s connect online
LinkedIn or Iterativ.ai

A few of my creative ai motions:

• waltwhitman.ai < a book of “whitmanesque poetry” with zero AI
• Radio No Head < *ai* parsed music for you to sing and dream with
• poətic.com < my page about the ai poetry conundrum
• hyper-soul < the science fiction exploration and world-building project
• clickthis.ai < my team for *ai* marketing and sales acceleration