Allegory of the 5 Companies: Which Do YOU Believe Will Be Around in a Decade?

What types of companies will be around in 10 years? 

In this episode, Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek discusses the allegory of 4... well 5 companies in the dairy industry to illustrate different approaches to adopting AI and technology. She emphasizes the importance of curiosity, engagement, and upskilling in ensuring long-term business success. The conversation explores the varying mindsets of companies regarding AI, highlighting the potential for innovation and growth in the face of technological change.

We will be talking about companies that have their head in sand, bottoms up, employee approaches, top down approaches, truly turning the ship, and the lean new competitors…

Which do YOU think will be around in a decade?

Also…

Work at a dairy company? Get in touch!

Want to give us some constructive feedback on the podcast?

Want to work with Joan and the Clarity AI team?

Get in touch by emailing us: hello@hireclarity.ai

More about Joan and Clarity AI helping companies craft their AI roadmaps and future-proof themselves: joanpbajorek.com

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Our episode about Aragon.ai: AI Tools I Love #2: Aragon.ai: AI Makes Quality Headshots of You for $35: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2358279/episodes/16318361

Takeaways from the episode

🔮 Future-proofing: Future-proofing businesses requires a proactive approach to change.

🚀 Disruption: Emerging companies can disrupt traditional industries by leveraging technology effectively.

🧠 Mindset: The mindset of company leaders significantly impacts their willingness to adopt new technologies.

📚 Upskilling: Upskilling employees is essential in adapting to technological advancements.

🥛 Dairy Industry: The dairy industry serves as a metaphor for broader business challenges. Joan's team Clarity AI is niching down into traditionally blue collar and trade sectors with open-minded stakeholders who want to have huge impact.

Citations for companies with small teams that have called to millions in revenue with less than 50 employees:

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Four Companies
• 6:56 Company Profiles: The Curious and Engaged Approach

Transcript

0:00

Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of Your AI Roadmap. My team is looking at those download numbers and notices that you all like shorter episodes or at least more episodes, even if they're not guest episodes. So I thought I'd record another one for you about this topic I've been really thinking about mulling over in my mind. I think it might become a talk. Let's find out what happens. And the overarching idea is the story of the four companies. Because as I've mentioned recently, I've been talking to more and more different customers in different sectors and kind of the mindset of their leaders. I'll admit to you, one of the people I met with recently, I was so excited. I thought there's so many opportunities that we could work on together. And the senior stakeholder was like, uh-huh, uh-huh. He was not listening. I realized partway through the meeting that I had come with an open mind and heart about what we could potentially do together. and he was meeting with an AI expert to check the box and say that he had met with one and he wasn't interested. And sadly, it just happened to me, and I validate people a little bit better, hopefully these days, spending my time with people who actually do want to collaborate and have fruitful discussions instead of just shutting it down. So you're listening to your AI roadmap. I think we're on the same page. I want to tell you this story of the allegory of four companies. So. I'm talking to companies in different sectors. And for this example, I would love to choose a sector that maybe you do or don't know very well. So I'm gonna pick, let's see. I mentioned I'm doing a manufacturing project. I think I wanna choose like the dairy industry maybe. I would love to work with a customer in the dairy industry. If you're in the dairy industry, please reach out. Now my question to you, which of these companies do you believe will be around, in a decade? so let's imagine that there are four companies in the dairy industry. dairy being milk, I'm talking cows, I'm talking ranch land, large scale enterprise, or maybe small mom and pop adventure here in the United States, maybe, or maybe it's a dairy, need, okay, we're sticking with dairy farm, okay. The dairy farm is a robust business that's been around for a while, and there are four companies roughly in the same place that have similar revenue, similar size, talking about stable companies, okay. I don't know the dairy industry that well, so someone can ping me and be like, bad example. But I'm gonna stick with dairy industry for now. Company number one. Company number one, things about AI or sees AI in the news and says like, yeah, that doesn't affect us. Is this like NFTs? This is just like crypto. This is just like virtual reality. It's not gonna stick. We're not interested. You know, we'll see it in the news and move on with our lives. Okay. Company number two. Company number two down the road, also a dairy farm. has some younger people, maybe some junior folks, maybe some junior hands helping out with the cows, maybe some millennials, maybe some Gen Z, maybe some older people. But let's imagine there is, I'm gonna put a millennial woman out there, and she's like, hey, you know, there could be some AI stuff we could do for the dairy farm that could help our marketing. We could get more inquiries, or maybe there's AI opportunities to document the cows. and different times of the year when they produce different amounts of milk. I'm making this up as I go. Okay, so that's company number two, but the problem with that one is that the person is too junior, kind of that bottoms up approach. People are not listening, the content she's saying doesn't necessarily hit the bottom line. So she's like, maybe about marketing, but she doesn't actually know what the fiscals are to see the P &L, to see the profit and loss sheet, to know what really affects the business fiscally. Right? That bottom up approach has got a lot of ideas, but it's not going to have traction. So ultimately, company number two is going to end up like company number one, taking no action. Company number three, top down approach. This is another dairy business, maybe across the state lines. And this company, there's a senior executive, maybe the CEO, maybe a board member who says, AI is an initiative we need to take and tries to get people to rally, but most people around this senior stakeholder, they're like, we're not interested. You know, we're dairy farmers, like, we'll try to humor this person, and maybe we'll put a little bit of money at that. But mostly, it also fizzles out because it doesn't have actual buy-in, and people see it as a fad, which is totally reasonable. So that top-down approach, especially with little buy-in, or just a tiny bit of money, doesn't have long-term value. Now the fourth company also is in the dairy industry, similar size It's across state lines, but the leadership has a different mindset. Maybe the CEO is like, hey, I read this article about AI in this other industry, and it could be really helpful for the dairy industry. You know, I'd like to just remain curious, and maybe we could have some stakeholder meetings. I'm realizing that there's huge fiscal. opportunity to boost revenue. Maybe there's ways to make more efficiencies. Like, I don't know what I don't know, right? This person may be a legacy or these people may be legacy in their industry. They are experts at dairy farming. They know their margins. They know their suppliers. They have deep partnerships, right? Like they're very, very good at what they do, staying in business But they also don't know what they don't know about optimizations that are coming down the pipeline. They don't know about different ways to make all employees more efficient potentially, retain customers. Maybe one day accidentally someone puts some cow data into a large language model and people are fishing for the data to learn about the cows. I think about as the character of stick metaphor. Is it a boost? Is it gonna help revenue? Is it a stick? Uh-oh, we might lose something. There's something to be lost, right? And with company number four, and I know there are different hype cycles, but Company number four also makes all employees go to training, just like you might for HR, right? This is how we consider AI or this is how we're thinking about technology in the next stage of the business. There's this desire to learn. There is curiosity. Now my question to you, which of these companies do you believe will be around, fiscally will be around and financially stable, et cetera, in a decade? I'm not talking about two years. I'm talking about five years. In 10 years time, which of these companies is going to be around? Is it going to be the no action company? Is it going to be the bottoms up, a few junior folks maybe? Is it going to be the top down executive tells people to do what to do and does or doesn't happen? Or company number four, where there's more buy-in, there's more learning, there's more curiosity, maybe they try different things. Now, you know probably I have a bias here that I am really excited about company number four. my opportunities to potentially work with and partner with amazing experts in their field, like company number four. But I'm going to sneak in company number five, because what I didn't tell you about the sneaky number two is that some of the junior folks actually leave. Some of the junior folks are like, hey, we really see huge opportunities with AI and the dairy industry, and we're going to step out and make our own company. We've got this large inheritance from grandma, and we think it's worth it. And now you might say, that's absurd. That's absurd. An AI-first dairy company, imagine how much lower overhead. Maybe they have some knowledge of the dairy industry. Maybe they don't know everything and they could get a retiree to help them and learn more. But they also, they're building efficiently. They're building more nimbly. One of them goes off and gets an MBA and gets more business savvy. But overall, what's wild to me about this secret stealth company number five. Now I wonder, which company is it number four that makes the transition or number five that starts with digital infrastructure that's gonna do well in the next 10 years? I wanna read you a list of a few companies Okay, these are nine companies with less than 50 employees, mostly around 20 employees. that have multimillion dollars in revenue. Multimillion dollars, right? Because these are not in the dairy industry, I'll say that. But the ability to take a hard left turn and do something completely different, building companies differently with robust revenue. Okay, let me read some of these to you. Cursor, zero to $100 million ARR, that's annual recurring revenue, in 21 months with 20 people. Midjourney, $0 to $200 million in ARR, two years, 10 employees. Lovable, $0 to $10 million in ARR in two months. Holy mackerel. With 15 people, I just saw about that company. Lovable. Magnific, $0 to $10 million ARR in one year with two people. Wow, Magnific. I got to look into them. Bolt.new, N-E-W, $0 to $20 million ARR in two months. 15 people, zero to $50 million ARR in two years with 30 people, 11 labs, zero to $100 million ARR in two years with 50 people, Aragon.ai, zero to $10 million ARR in two years with nine people. Now you've heard me, if you've listened to this podcast, mention Aragon.ai, the company that does the headshots, and I really enjoy that tool. Go check out that episode if you want to check it out, AI tools I love. But these are small teams. that have built in a different way with a small team that have robust revenue. Robust revenue. And so when I think about opportunities, okay, you may say, hey, Joan, I don't know anybody in the dairy industry. This doesn't apply to me. But let's go into whatever industry you are in. Is there a chance to turn the boat, right, and to be relevant fiscally? Maybe you say, I don't want to be around in 10 years. You know, I'm excited to, you know, exit my company to sell the company or whatnot. you know, I just want to stay stable. Stable is actually the safest bet, which I don't see that here today as I record this in May 2025. I think there's going to a lot of radical changes. that turn the boat and have people upskill in this new skill set. It's like my customers time about this the other day. suddenly there were computers. Little by little, everybody, whatever company mostly, has to upskill on how a computer affects the workplace. Right? And so the same thing here that everyone needs to upskill. We don't want to make really awful mistakes. But I really believe that company number four, that people take the skill sets. And someone says, hey, I'm not training. I remember they said something about like data and the boots. And if we considered not cleaning the boots this way, but maybe another way, could that help the bottom line? Could that move the needle? The ability for people on the ground, literally, to give advice, to learn more, and to say, I see this. There's an opportunity here. Or is this a thing? Like that grassroots curiosity with buy-in for more senior stakeholders. Maybe there's even an incentivization program. Hey, if you notice something that we can optimize, you get a bonus. Right there, I think there's so many different ways and I'm working on workshops with companies for, can we organize your data? Let's do nuts and bolts. What do these things, what do these terms mean, truly? How can we protect ourselves? How can we upscale? So I'm building up workshops for these things as I work with customers and kind of standardize the ways I help companies. But point being, I also think this contender of starting from a digital, AI forward, efficient company that gets multiple millions in revenue with a small lean team, I believe could be part of the future. And so if some of these legacy companies, whether you're in the dairy industry, whether you're in manufacturing, whether you're in advertising, really knowing that this new company style may blow others out of the water. I'm not talking more stakeholders, I got tons of customer upcoming things and how I and my team can partner with other companies to really showcase opportunities, risks and advantages and tie it to the fiscal. I'm very business minded. But I really would love to hear your feedback on this and how you think about different companies. If you're meeting people who are like, I think I mentioned this in another episode, I'll mention it here again. My aunt who went COVID happened and she had to digitize everything as a professor. She's like, I would rather retire. I'm out. Like, no, thank you. And that is an option for people like her who have the money who can just retire. But for most of the rest of us, there's a huge transition going on. And the opportunity, I hope for people like you listening to this podcast to say, hey, I want to upskill. Or I have that curiosity. How can I make this tangible? What makes sense for my field, for my life, or maybe the company that I want to build? Hey Joan, I am in the dairy industry. And I would like to start a company that has 10 employees and amazing revenue and amazing impact and et cetera. there's so many cool opportunities to think outside the box. AI forward marketing, efficient marketing tools. Fiscals are documented really well. Maybe there's digital payments for all of those dairy transfers. I don't know. I I still see people using paper notes for things. Anyway, I take a lot of notes via paper and via the tool I use for note taking. Point being though, I see huge opportunities. I'm really, really optimistic. I would love your feedback on the allegory of the four companies secretly, five companies in the age of AI and their roadmaps. If you want to give feedback on this episode, or honestly, we look at the download rates from around the world. So thank you to all the people around the world. I think we're like over 70 countries now. Wow. Thank you to the person in Finland. I saw you. You rock. So if you want to give feedback, you can always email hello at higherclarity.ai. Hire us, Hireclarity.ai. Hello at helloclarity.ai. I'll make sure it's in the show notes. Let us know what you like. If you are a dairy farmer, I would seriously love to hear from you. it's a cool industry. But mostly, I am really excited to hear from all of you, how you think about these things as I meet different customers. please think on this, which company you think you're at currently or which company you're leading. And if you'd like to craft an AI roadmap and work on future proofing your business together, I would so love to have that convo with you for serious if you're listening to this. So please reach out via email and we'll be in touch. And all the best from a very soggy day here in Seattle. Okay. I'll see you again for another episode of Your AI Roadmap Cheers.