The course of the next five years will determine whether your company rides the AI wave or is swept away by it.
The creator of the company accelerator Dent Global and best-selling book Daniel Priestley has issued that warning.
In a podcast interview on Tuesday, he characterized artificial intelligence (AI) as a rapidly developing technological change that would divide the economy into “haves and have-nots” by 2027 and businesses who haven’t evolved will be “out of business” by the early 2030s.
You would not have time off if a tsunami was going to smash the shore. You move your family out of the way, he told podcaster James Smith on “The Problem With…” podcast.
Now is not the time to rest. “Now is the time to paddle,” he added.
Here are the three stages Priestley said will determine which side you end up on.
1. Assume your business is already dead—and rebuild it
At Priestley’s company retreats, entrepreneurs begin with a sad premise: your company has already been destroyed.
We like telling people that our company is no longer in business. “We need to reinvent the business,” he explained. “We play the game and we say, ‘How did the business die?'”
The typical response, he said, is that it was replaced by a faster, AI-powered competitor that gave value instantaneously and presented a more compelling story.
That revelation creates the foundation for a new strategy.
“We said, ‘OK, we’ve got to become that company – the firm that disrupted and decimated our current business. That is our responsibility today.”
Priestley refers to it as the “Your business is dead” workshop, a thought experiment intended to shake founders out of complacency and drive them to incorporate AI into their core before someone else does.
“Every day that you wait is going to be a day of catch-up that you have to do,” according to him. “How are you going to reinvent it?”
2. Treat AI as free labor—and build around it
Priestley refers to this thinking as “Atlantis has risen,” a metaphor that illustrates how AI profoundly increases human capability.
He asks the founders to envision discovering a new continent called Atlantis, which is home to a billion individuals with master’s and Ph.D. degrees who are all prepared to work for free.
They’re really smart, but they don’t know anything about what you want them to accomplish. They are all ready to work for free. And we call them agents.”
To him, AI symbolizes an infinite digital workforce – intelligent, relentless, and cost-free — capable of doing complicated research, generating ideas, and carrying out large-scale jobs.
“If you could access unlimited free labor, these remote workers, what would you do?”
3. Establish a 30-person AI team
In Priestley’s world, scale no longer denotes size.
He predicted that the organizations that dominate the AI age will be lean, agile, and tightly focused, with tiny teams moving at machine speed.
His “2-4-8-30 rule” breaks that down.
2-person scout team to test new ideas.
4-person fire-starting team to launch products.
8-person core team to sustain seven-figure revenue.
30-person scale-up team to go global.
He replied that with 30 individuals, you can do a lot. You can now accomplish what 300 people used to do because to artificial intelligence.
He feels that this organization reflects the current reality, in which AI has eliminated the necessity for enormous hierarchies and excessive headcounts. What is important now is speed, innovation, and the capacity to incorporate technology directly into decision-making.
In summary, Priestley emphasizes that this will be a five-year sprint rather than a marathon.
“For the first five years, it’s just a toy. “You ignore it, and then it becomes more serious,” he added, “and then it leaps the chasm and becomes embedded in everything.”
He believes we’re halfway through that window, and that by 2027, the gap between AI users and laggards will be irreversible.
“This is not the time to rest,” he stated. “This is the time to paddle like crazy and surf this thing.”
