Why I’m Going ALL IN on AI in 2026 (and you should too)

All right, here's the reality. I'm going all in on AI in 2026, and the truth is you should too. I recently put on an event where I invited dozens of AI CEOs to discuss where is everybody going to be disrupted, what's working now. And I thought to myself, why don't I just invite the world? Why don't I show you?

There's so many people out there that talk about shit that they've never done. We're doing it.

I challenged Roddy. I said, we need a plan to build a billion-dollar company in 3 years.

Well, he comes back and he says, we are going to build an AI venture a venture studio that generates $25 billion in enterprise value.

The last 2 years have been exponential and parabolic.

This is not easy, as you all know, but man, is it fun.

Before the internet, there was whole companies and businesses and industries called magazines and newspapers, and there was people that that made paper products for that industry and everybody lost their jobs. And then what they didn't realize is it created a new set of jobs called web designer. Okay, that didn't exist literally before the internet. There was nothing called a web designer. Yeah. And now there's web designers and then there's security people and system analysts and network engineers and all these new jobs that were created only because of the internet. The ones that saw the internet come and said, okay, we have a newspaper, but we also have the internet, let's start investing in the internet and we're going to slowly, as the memberships die off, we're just going to transition into the online and we're gonna become a digital online platform and make money. This is what the role of a CEO has always been. It doesn't matter if you're Blockbuster, Kodak, or a fucking paper company. Your job is to look at where things are going and get ahead of it. So the role right now for everybody, honestly, if you want my opinion, teach everybody how to code. I just got out of a meeting with a guy that said we have 50 people on the staff and we taught everybody cloud code, including the HR people, including the marketing people, including everybody. And they all took all their workload and their workflows and they automated into new dashboards. Dashboards that they're all coding. Here's what people don't get. If you don't do this, your team will see what the world's doing and go find a company that is doing this cuz they don't wanna become irrelevant. That's a fact. You can decide not to do this cuz you're worried to lose your people. You're gonna lose 'em because they're gonna jump ship because they're gonna realize you're a sinking ship. There's this framework that I teach often called neural transformation, which is understanding what are the things that'll never change. So it's like from a leadership point of view, I felt like I had to pour into the people, even the world's smartest AI folks, just on understanding how they need to show up in this new world and then also show them how AI is going to completely change everything they're building. Most of the people in the world are fucked. That is a technical term. And when I say they're fucked, they're fucked fucked. Okay? Because they are still pretending like this isn't here. They're acting like this is the internet. They're acting like this is mobile. They're acting like all these innovations that have happened They think it's going to be similar, so they got time. The good news is, is there used to be buildings full of people in New York City that calculated interest rates on mortgages, and then the spreadsheet came out and those people went away. And all of a sudden there was a whole bunch of people managing spreadsheets. There's always been a de-skill and an up-skill of every industry. AI is going to create a whole lot of jobs and already has that didn't exist before AI that will give people opportunity right off the bat. If you don't think AI primitive, AI native, AI first, whatever you're building right now, pointless. If you don't go to AI and say, here is my goal, tell me how to accomplish it before you start a task, you are doing it to yourself. You are acting like you don't know that it knows more than you could ever imagine you could ever fucking learn. It's got PhDs in every discipline of human mankind, and you still pretend like you know better while everybody else is stuck here. This room is going to elevate. Does that make sense? Say yes. Yes.

The one thing I would take away at that event is there's another level and there's another level with AI, and you need to be aware of that next level.

There's so many people out there that talk about shit that they've never done. We're doing it, whether it's AI or media company or leading teams or holding high standards. We're doing it. And I want to have the ability to show that.

The world of technology today has completely changed, okay? Where it used to be zeros and ones, then hexadecimal, then assembler, then C, then C++, Visual Basic. Today it's English. Can you speak English? Say yes. You can code? Cool. Say yes. Okay, so you guys can do this. I'm here to be honest with you because I understand that the rest of the world filters what it says to people, 'cause it doesn't trust that people can handle the truth. The news says this, the reality is this, why would they say that? I've never been that guy, because I would feel so shitty to have somebody feel surprised by learning something that I knew about a year and a half ago. So are you guys down to be exposed to what the future is gonna hold? Say yes.

Yes.

All right, it's on you. We had demos done by a lot of different people in my companies. Those talks blew my mind. And they're in my companies, like I know them. I had my CTO Etienne go up there and talk about how language models actually work and use a very physical exercise. What got everybody to understand it for once. A lot of people use these AIs, but they don't actually know how they work.

It's like I'm telling you, write Anton a message, okay? We're the LLM. What do you think that next word needs to be? As quickly as possible, group yourself with someone who picked the same word. Okay, 60 seconds. The largest grouping is sure, S-U-R-E. To get to sure in GPU land, you know, GPUs, Nvidia chips, half a billion to a trillion mathematical transactions to get to the word "sure." Essentially, every single word gets tokenized. Now, once your very precious prompt has been tokenized, let's say this is the index number 12, 200, 500, 80, whatever. This is all sorts of indexes that Points to an embedding table. The embedding table essentially is a table of vectors, a list of numbers. And every token points to one of these long rows of numbers. And then they go through this thing called the LLM. And the LLM is really a transformer where all these vectors are calculated against a bunch of pretrained vectors. And this is the thing that happens 500 billion times. Out pops another vector, and this vector is a token ID that points to the same table that then is a word which apparently is sure.

And he broke it down, man. He even built his own friggin' agentic CTO that he uses. He talks to it to code stuff. and it hired people.

Hello, this is Tony.

Hey Tony, that LLM pipeline thing we did, what was the URL to that?

Hey, let me check the LLM pipeline project for you. The LLM pipeline demo is live at https://demo.hello-tron.com.

I'll email you the link so you have it handy.

Sent you the link.

For those who don't know, Tony is my new best friend. It's a result of a call that Dan and I had about a week ago. This is literally like a couple of days old.

So think of Tony as like your CTO that you activate by just talking to it. You watched him do it. But I want you to understand is the future of building apps is voice. Anybody in the development world already knows that. But tools like Tony, a.k.a. Tron, are the kind of tools we're building at Martell Ventures to support the portfolio companies. When I think of some of the people in the room, I think the philosophy that they haven't figured out to the highest level is the idea of being a director, not a doer, right? Because those tasks is where AI is gonna disrupt them. But learning how to direct the code, because most programmers today don't write code anymore. They direct the code, shape the code. The big thing is they don't realize that the tasks that they all do as professions are going away. AI's gonna do all that. And what they should try to remind themselves of is what's the purpose of my role? If you look objectively to a CEO without knowing what they are saying or doing, you would think they're professional typists 'cause they're always typing on their phone or they're typing on their laptop 'cause they're communicating. But what is their purpose? My purpose is not to type. My purpose is to lead and vision cast and inspire and coach up. If you have expertise in an industry, cool. Let's get rid of 90% of the task stuff that actually doesn't enable the purpose. They think because they're a craftsman at that thing, AI can't disrupt me. Oh no, it's already disrupted you, you just don't know it. Let me show you that. Okay, now that you know that, let's lead the innovation. Don't allow yourself to be disrupted. Let's go create the disruption that supports you in the real purpose of what you're supposed to do in life anyway. I made a decision a long time ago to be the example for people that don't have positive examples. That shows up in the media, but my happy place is actually helping people create things for themselves. So Martell Ventures had to be created because I had so many incredible people that I'd coached, worked with, supported, know of, done life with, but I didn't have a playground a place that was efficient and fun. I needed a Roddy to run it. And that's why we did the Builder Summit, was to then broadcast that to the world and show other people how it can be done.

December 2024, it was snowing and I knew he was going to call. I just didn't know when he was going to call. Bam, I get the call. He shares 3 profound things with me that day. Number 1, we are going to build an AI venture studio that generates $25 billion in enterprise value by helping founders win. Number 2, we have an unfair advantage. 28 years of building businesses, helping founders. We have playbooks. We have 350+ playbooks on how to build businesses. Number 3, he said, and I remember this vividly, Roddy, you will never have to be on stage ever.

I am responsible for the operations and the execution of our vision at Martell Ventures as the managing partner. I typically like spending time in the back of the room, and that was really the basis of the relationship with Dan and his journey of Martell Ventures. That journey of growth and being pushed, it's more than a push, it's usually a kick. So that's probably the biggest growth for me is to get the chance to emcee, being the glue and the orchestrator of the event.

Team the Golf Barati, everybody! Let's go! I look at Martell Ventures as a platform, and this is our core mission. We become the global leader in AI-powered SMB innovation, period. That's our— that small, medium-sized businesses is our— it's my fucking passion. First off, everybody's been asked to leave because they're all downstairs at the event. This is a fraction of the people that's part of this organization. These are just some of the companies, actually 5 more that we've added. Martell Ventures only started 13 months ago, and in 13 months we've launched, deployed, and gotten companies to revenue, 15+ companies. Yeah, it's wild, man. So it's funny because when we started, I challenged Roddy. I said, Roddy, we need a plan to build a billion-dollar company in 3 years. Originally it was 5. So I figured I'd give him the goal to do 3 so that we had some slack. Well, he comes back and he says, that's cool. Why don't we go for 25 and 10? I was like, bro. But at the same time, I'm like, dream bigger. I can't ask him to trim it down. But he also presented me a plan that actually made sense. As an example, the blue ocean, the red ocean. The red ocean is thinking I have a software company AI is a big thing. I gotta add AI to it. So then what happens is you have this product and an interface and you add AI-powered features to the interface. The blue ocean, Martell Ventures, is let's start with an AI-first approach. And in that mental model of AI-first, how would you build this solution? Every one of those companies are AI-first companies. They're not a product that we added AI to. We start with the premise of AI. So for example, Hero, a recruiting platform, there's no interface. You make a phone call, you don't have an account, it creates you an account, it texts you the link to the job post, it runs the ad, it does all this agentic automation for you behind the scenes. Why do I need to log into a software? So that's what makes this a blue ocean strategy, because we flip the whole concept of software on its head.

There's definitely power in a community like ours and the portfolio companies and the founders. That they're all sharing so you don't have to spend as much time to get the same input back in.

The reason why I chose Roddy to run Martell Ventures is, A, I've known him for 20+ years. He built and exited a software company. At that level, I'm always asking myself who I can trust. He's the kind of guy that if I put $100 million on a USB key and gave it to him full of Bitcoin, when I came back, it would be there. It may not be worth $100 million anymore, it might be worth a billion, but I know he would be there. And he's got the technical background, he's got the EQ level off the charts, he's a people guy. The things that qualify him the most are not the technical skills because that's my nerdy happy place. But what he does better than anybody else, which, you know, AI can never take, is he knows how to talk and manage people. He's my fixer. I'm like, hey bro, I got a problem here. He goes, heard.

This is not easy, as you all know, but man, is it fun. I'll do this every day. I do this every day.

What I'm doing at Martell Ventures is building a platform where we can partner with individuals. It doesn't matter if you're technical or business, and we can co-create. We literally come up with ideas based on the audience that we know we can serve, the problems we know they have, and we try to find product founder fit. We try to think of innovation. That doesn't exist yet. This is the heartbeat, man. We have about 16 of these whiteboards. We're drawing diagrams, architectures, database structures, fucking enrichment process flows. The team here is about 15 people. That's at the Martell Ventures operating side. And then we have our portfolio companies and there's hundreds of people below us. Default to action. This is my motto in life. If it speaks to your heart, do something with it right now. Don't wait, don't overanalyze, don't sleep on it. If it speaks to your heart, if you feel it, if you feel it, go. You feel it, move. Anyways, we just had a big meeting here, but essentially this is where I spend 97% of my time, man. I got my car down there that I get to vibe on and look at all the time. Got the YouTube plaque, got the two books I wrote. I got a skateboard I created. Most people don't know I grew up skateboarding. I've got all the cars and the stories of the cars and the logos and Just a clean, clean environment. And this is like built custom into the desk. This is the mountain Martell Mountain logo. And I created this really cool thing with the cars. Those are 3 of my favorite cars. I've got this beautiful lady that works next to me, always getting in trouble with her perks. This is the operating companies I've got. You know, one guy runs the finance departments of over 12 companies. One guy. People have probably 13 people for this one guy's role. And then we've got a lot of go-to-market people, growth assistants, sales, software tech, CTO, portfolio managers. And why do you think it's important to have them all in one space? The speed we're moving, you have to be in proximity. I always say, get on a plane and come see me. Come hang out. Let's— just come and you'll get it. Just sit here for the day, come talk, come play, come strategize, come look, be in this building. Yeah, right. Martell Media is in this building. Go be around the caliber of people. Yeah, man. It's just, it's one part inspiration, another part execution. You can't escape it. I've been talking to some of the people downstairs and that's what they've been saying is like, I need to be in this environment more. I know. That's why I brought them here.

Yeah.

Every one of them. I told them all, you're in this room because I want to do something with you. The hardest part for any company, man, it's knowing what to push on, how much and when. And that's what I'm great at. It's my happy place. But how do I scale that?

We've gotten more results in the last 2 years than we had in the last 8, which is essentially how media works, right? Is you invest a shit ton at the start, you get the engine going, but then once you have momentum, that's when you start to double down and that's when you start to actually get results.

Anybody that knows me, hopefully, you know Sam, you know, because he's been in my life. We built Martell Media together. He's my partner in crime. I wanted him to share how we've built the brand side of things because as much as I love the innovation and AI is 100% going to replace a lot of the work being done, the thing that makes any person valuable is the brand that precedes them before they ever walk into the room.

I've started working with Dan almost 8 years ago. I was a team of one doing all the media. And since then I've been able to scale that team from me to over 15 people full-time. So the thesis of my talk was essentially going from bottleneck to builder, essentially step away from being the bottleneck in your business. Cause a lot of leaders actually bottleneck their team because they're making all the decisions and they don't trust their team to take action. And so I break it down to 3 Ds. One is when you're the doer. And I used to be that guy. I used to edit videos. I used to, you know, review my own videos and then post them. I did all this stuff. Then you move into a director role where you're actually, you know, directing people to actually do the work. So you have a bunch, a ton of editors, you have graphic designers, and you're just telling everybody what to do. That scales up to about 7 people. But when you scale past 7 people and you want to go to, you know, 15, 20, 25 people, that's when you have to step back and be the designer. And what a designer is, is someone who designs a system that doesn't need them, right? Where their presence feels Additive, not needed. That's a big idea because I thought that, you know, I had to be involved in every single area of the process in the business for it to grow.

And so I wanted Sam to teach that to these AI nerds because guess what? Especially the software guys, they know that their jobs are getting disrupted, but everybody's got the potential to build a reputation, which is a brand. And that's what Sam delivered.

Being a leader at 19 years old leading a team of 3 editors that were twice my age. I had to earn that respect through these 5 rules, and the first one is probably the most important. Hire for the soul, train for the role, right? And I have 3 questions that I ask myself. First question is, can they do the work? That's basic. The second question is, do they care about the work? That's a bigger one. The third one, the most important, is, are they a good person? Rule number 2, default to trust. We give an irresponsible amount of trust to our new employees. Give them 100% ownership, but then inspect what you expect. Rule number 3: train, no tell. I can't expect somebody to be a high performer and not show them what a high performer looks like. Rule number 4: measure what matters. You have to measure the, the few metrics that actually matter and have, you know, north star metrics. For us at Martell Media, revenue, followers. Super simple. And then we have a quality measure, which is revenue per follower, which is just the first number divided by the second, right? And what that does for us, it gives us clarity, a North Star, somewhere to go. Rule number 5, very important: lighthouse, not tugboat. For example, I wanted my team to start posting content online so they could understand the algorithm better, but I wasn't doing it myself. And 65 days ago, I decided I'm gonna do daily content, and that was 100% decision to stop being Sorry for lack of a better term, but a little shit and start posting content. When people say, oh, in the next 5 years the people that are going to win are the people that are going to adopt AI, I think to myself, yes, and the people who are going to adopt media, people that are going to adopt attention, right? Because in a world where you can spin up HubSpot, Dropbox, Slack, those tools in seconds, right, using an AI tool, the problem now is distribution. How many people can you make see that product? And I think a lot of people under-index the importance of media and building attention. In the new age because it sounds hard, but it's not if you have a system.

So I also had Todd speak at the event who's the CEO of Martell Media. And Todd's an impressive guy and I'll tell you why. And what I love about him, and I used to joke all the time, is like he's got two daughters and he writes poetry. He doesn't like that I say that, but it does explain like Todd, if you look at him, he's like Ironman, type A, driven, values, standards. And he's got a heart of gold, man. Like, I would just trust him to take care of my family. And, and he does that. And in many ways, the team at Media are family. And he's an operational genius.

So I'm going to share a framework that I call— and again, it's new— it's called the Builder's Pyramid. And it stacks 4 things. When I was asked to present at the Builder's Summit, usually when I do talks, it's about stuff that I'm doing. Right? I'm not going to talk about something I'm not doing. So when I was thinking about how I would approach it, I just thought about how I operate as a business, how I do things, and I thought there's got to be something in there that's going to be valuable. There's a big business lie that's out there. I believed it for a long time, and the lie is that people are your greatest asset. I don't think that's true. Standards are your greatest asset. The people that you have in your world are the evidence of your standards. Next one is talent. The way I view talent is two things. Number one is, um, hire better than you and build those people up. The next one is strategy. Strategies are not a to-do list. In strategies, you're giving clarity to what you need done in the organization. So another way to think about it is strategies are a sacrifice. And the last one is dreams. So your dreams are the inspiration. All your people need to fit within there. But don't start with the numbers. If you want to get people to come in your world and you can't pay them what you maybe think they're worth, what gets them to come into your world? Your dreams and your story. That's what makes them come, right? Think about Apple or You think Steve Jobs had or Bill Gates, they didn't have the money back then, but they actually got people to come in because of their dreams and what they were trying to do. Sam talked about some of the rhythms that we do inside. This is the framework that how you pull it all together because that is the difference. Fix your standards and everything else will flow. Thank you very much.

If I had to give you one word to describe the whole event, it's back to my core thesis, which is no small plans.

I mean, I love when people come into our events or come to the studio and why it's important for them to see it. Anything, quite frankly, even myself, is because once you see something, you can't unsee it.

I would say the Builders Summit first version was a test. Hey, can we bring cool people together and do cool stuff? I believe we accomplished that test pretty well.

I think, you know, super cool that the team that we've built, the culture we've built, and everybody that gets results from our coaching. But in that same breath, like, if we've gotten to this point after 3 years of taking it seriously, what can we do in another 3 years, right?

Even the space of AI in 8 months from now will be so completely different that when we bring people together, there's going to be a good reason. And because good people want to be with good people, There's never going to be a shortage of the right people who want to get together and talk about the front edge and cliff of AI, quite frankly.

Everything I do is asking myself if I'm playing a small game. And that's why it has to be expansive, because every time I get to the edge of an idea or thought, I'm like, what else? The number one thing that's going to change your life is the environment that you spend time in. And if on your heart you think to yourself, I got to move, I got to say yes, I got to join this thing. I don't care if it's a community or a company. If you know that you feel that, default to action, like just do it. Don't let this be a moment where you just get inspired. No. If you want to work with me, want to partner with me, reach out. You want to join somebody's community, want to join my community, reach out. This is the moment to act.