Let's get one thing straight: The AI ROI your consultant is promising you is a lie.
I had a founder call me last week. He was $250,000 into a project with a big-name consulting firm to build a “revolutionary” AI-powered logistics engine. After six months, all he had was a massive bill and a PowerPoint deck full of jargon. The 'engine' was a mess of open-source libraries that couldn't even handle their peak season data. He got sold a dream and woke up to a nightmare.
This isn't a rare story. It's happening everywhere. The AI gold rush has brought out the charlatans, and they are getting rich by selling snake oil to executives who are terrified of being left behind.
You’re Not Ready for AI
You say you're data-driven, but are you? Really?
If your team isn't making decisions based on data before AI, the new tools will just help you make bad decisions faster. This is the part nobody wants to talk about. Everyone wants to jump to the sexy part—the large language models, the generative AI, the autonomous agents. They forget that all of it is built on a foundation of data.
And for most companies, that foundation is quicksand.
I’ve looked under the hood at hundreds of companies, from startups to the Fortune 500. I’ve put angel checks into over 180 of them, including some of the biggest names in AI today like Anthropic and Scale AI. The pattern is always the same. The successful ones are obsessed with data hygiene. The ones that fail are drowning in data debt.
Before you spend a single dollar on an AI consultant, ask yourself these questions:
- Do we have a single source of truth for our customer data?
- Can we track our core business KPIs in real-time? Not in a report that takes a week to generate.
- Is our data clean, structured, and accessible?
- Does our team have a culture of asking “what does the data say?” before making a decision?
If the answer to any of these is “no,” then you are not ready for AI. You have bigger problems to solve.
The Three Red Flags of an AI Charlatan
I’ve been in this game for a long time. I built and sold two tech companies, one of which, RemoteTeam, was acquired by Gusto. I’ve seen every trick in the book. When I’m listening to a pitch from an AI vendor or consultant, I’m looking for a few key signals that tell me they’re full of it.
Here’s my insider’s guide to spotting the fakes.
1. They Promise ROI Without a Data Audit
Anyone who promises you a specific ROI—a 10x return, a 50% reduction in costs—without first doing a deep, technical audit of your data infrastructure is either a liar or an amateur. It’s impossible. The potential of AI is directly tied to the quality of the data you feed it. A promise without a data diagnosis is pure fantasy.
2. They Use Vague, Buzzword-Heavy Language
Listen closely to how they talk. Are they speaking in specifics, or are they hiding behind a wall of buzzwords? If you hear phrases like “next-generation synergy,” “AI-driven paradigm shift,” or “harnessing the power of the algorithm,” run for the hills.
A real expert will talk about specifics. They’ll ask about your data pipelines, your model training process, your validation sets, and your integration points. They’ll speak like an engineer, not a marketer.
3. Their “Team” is Just a Sales Guy
Ask to meet the technical team who will actually be building the product. Not the sales lead, not the account manager—the hands-on-keyboard engineers. If they are evasive, or if the people you meet can’t answer deep technical questions, that’s a huge red flag. Many of these “AI firms” are just a thin layer of sales and marketing wrapped around a handful of outsourced, junior developers. You’re paying a premium for a fancy suit, not for world-class talent.
So, What Should You Do?
Stop chasing the AI hype. Start building a data-driven culture.
The real ROI doesn't come from a magical black box you buy from a consultant. It comes from the hard, unglamorous work of cleaning your data, building robust systems, and training your team to think like scientists. It comes from making a thousand small, data-informed decisions every day.
I wrote about this in my book, Becoming Top 1%. The best performers in any field are masters of the fundamentals. In business today, the most important fundamental is data.
Forget about AI for the next six months. Instead, put that budget into hiring a great data engineer. Task them with creating a single, unified view of your customer. Build a dashboard with your 3-5 most important metrics that updates in real time. Teach every team lead how to use it.
Do that, and you’ll be ahead of 90% of your competition. Then, and only then, will you be ready to have a real conversation about AI. And when you are, you won’t need a charlatan to help you. The path forward will be obvious.
Frequently Asked Questions
What experience informs this perspective?
This perspective comes from over a decade of building companies in Silicon Valley, two successful exits (RemoteTeam to Gusto, MovieLaLa to Gfycat), and investing in 200+ startups including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Scale AI. I write about what I've lived.
Do all experts agree with this view?
No, and that's fine. The best ideas in business are often contrarian. I share my perspective based on my experience and data, but I encourage you to seek out opposing viewpoints and form your own conclusions.
How has this view evolved over time?
My thinking on most topics has changed significantly over the years. Early in my career, I held many conventional views that experience proved wrong. I try to update my beliefs when the evidence changes.
How can I apply this thinking to my own situation?
Start by identifying the core principle behind the opinion, not the specific example. Then ask yourself: does this principle apply to my context? If yes, test it in a small, low-risk way before going all in.