The fastest path to AI adoption in your company isn’t hiring an expert. It’s becoming one yourself.

In this episode, we sit down with John Kaplar, who left an 18-year software career to teach founders and designers how to integrate AI into real workflows. John makes the case that founders who delegate AI before they understand it can’t manage the work, evaluate the results, or build on what’s possible.

We dig into why agentic AI is the wave founders can’t afford to skip, how one founder built a full SaaS application in a weekend, and the single best use of AI for early-stage companies. Plus, what founders need to know about data ethics, AI bias, and why showing up as an actual human is becoming the only competitive moat that matters.

If you’re trying to figure out where AI fits in your business right now, this episode maps it out.

Keywords: AI for founders, agentic AI, AI adoption, founder productivity, Claude Code, Artificial Intelligence, startup AI strategy, John Kaplar, AI tools for business, How To Founder

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Anthony Franco Entrepreneur and Chief AI Officer

Most AI advice comes from people who have never built anything. Anthony Franco has built seven companies and exited six, including Effective Inc., a UX consultancy that served 40% of the Fortune 100, grew to $50M in revenue, and was acquired by WPP. The rest spanned consumer products, AI platforms, wireless networks, marketing software, and real estate. That track record is why he approaches AI differently: he has seen how organizations actually adopt technology, where they break, and what it costs when they get it wrong.

He coordinates contributions to AI First Principles, an open-source framework that gives teams a shared foundation for AI decisions. He wrote The WISER Method to turn those principles into something practitioners can run in the field. As Chief AI Officer of First Strategy, he works directly with companies on AI automation and go-to-market strategy.

He also co-hosts How to Founder, a podcast about building companies without the mythology.