What Founders Get Wrong About AI (And How to Actually Use It) with Jeff Kuei

What if AI makes winners faster and losers obsolete?

There’s a blunt tradeoff hiding behind the hype: artificial intelligence multiplies whatever you already are. I say that with a little chill in my voice because the idea lands like a dare — get your house in order or watch automation magnify your weakest moves.

AI as a force multiplier, not a miracle

Jeff Quay, CEO of Kixie, lays out a crisp distinction that felt like a reset button. AI won’t fix bad workflows. It accelerates the good and intensifies the broken. That’s not cynical; it’s practical. A McKinsey stat he cites puts teeth on the claim: a large share of AI projects fail because processes weren’t aligned. Fix the process first, then add the turbo.

Honestly, I didn’t expect such a military metaphor to be so helpful. Calling AI a "turbocharger for a well-oiled machine" reframes typical startup fantasies about scaling overnight. The real win is less about scale and more about precision.

Speed to lead: seconds matter

Here’s a jolt: lead contact likelihood collapses roughly tenfold if you don’t respond within minutes. That statistic stopped me. Imagine a potential customer peeking at pricing then fading away because your follow-up lagged.

Kixie’s approach is straightforward: automate the immediate nudge. Texts, calls, or triggers that meet the buyer when intent is hottest can move conversion rates from single digits toward real growth. The roofing case study Jeff shares — compressing average response time from hours to minutes — felt like proof, not theory. Conversion and deal velocity jump when timing matches intent.

Volume versus velocity

Most founders chase volume. Jeff pushed back hard on that instinct. The smarter play is velocity and context. Would you rather spray thousands of generic messages or fire dozens of precisely timed, personalized ones? That image of a single shotgun versus many sniper rifles stuck with me.

AI’s edge, then, is personalization at speed: context-aware messages, faster follow-ups, and better moment-to-moment engagement. It’s not a numbers game; it’s a timing game with better accuracy.

The underrated power of the phone

I expected Jeff to champion automated chat or omnichannel funnels. Instead, he argued for synchronous conversation — the phone — as an underused competitive advantage. Asynchronous channels give people space to ignore you; a real-time call forces clarity and immediacy.

That doesn’t mean cold-calling for its own sake. It means recognizing when a phone touchpoint will turn complexity into commitment: legal closings, wedding plans, high-stakes purchases. Less noise, more impact.

Legend Mode: a prompt for excellence

One of the episode’s most vivid moments came when Jeff described "Legend Mode." He engineered prompts that force AI to push employees toward top-1% performance. The idea is simple but bold: treat the model as a mirror that amplifies skills — so feed it high-context, demanding prompts that don’t play nice.

That felt almost playful at first. Then I thought about the practical side: if your team uses LLMs, the quality of input determines whether the tool elevates or enervates. Legend Mode reframes prompt engineering as a cultural discipline, not a tinkering exercise.

Measure everything you care about

Jeff is a stats person, and his advice landed with clarity: measure response times, track friction points, log interactions automatically. You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Once you surface bottlenecks, AI can help remove them — but only after you know where they live.

There’s an emotional tug here too. Founders often tell themselves that intuition will save them. Metrics are less sexy, but they are the map. AI is the vehicle that runs on that map.

Two possible futures

Jeff’s final inversion stuck with me: if you’re already high-performing, AI will make you ten times better. If you’re not, you risk replacement. That’s both inspiring and worrying. It’s a call to raise standards quickly.

What if you rebuilt your outreach around speed, precision, and synchronous moments? What if your prompts demanded greatness? The answers are not simple, but they are actionable: measure, tighten processes, use AI to amplify context, and treat live conversations as strategic opportunities.

Ultimately, AI is a spotlight — it exposes strengths and weaknesses alike, and how you respond will tell the story of your next chapter.