startups

We’re about to see a new wave of consulting firms.
Not the PowerPoint kind.
The “make this actually work” kind.
Because everyone talks about deploying AI agents.
Very few understand what that means inside a real company.
Most businesses are not clean systems.
They are:
– legacy tools
– messy, fragmented data
– undocumented knowledge
– processes built over years
And they still have to run every day.
So the real question is not:
“Should we use AI?”
It’s:
“How do we make it work… here?”
That gap is massive.
And that’s why services are coming back.
Not as strategy decks.
As hands-on deployment.
People who can:
– map real workflows
– clean and connect data
– design agent-driven processes
– manage change inside teams
Because agents don’t fail due to tech.
They fail due to integration and adoption.
That creates a new category:
AI-native consulting.
Focused, narrow, practical.
Not “digital transformation”.
Actual transformation.
Funny thing – everyone is talking about automation.
But what’s really happening is:
a shift in services.
Less repetitive work.
More responsibility.
Less execution.
More judgment.
If you understand how to deploy AI in messy, real environments…
you won’t struggle to find work.
If you're navigating this shift – building, pivoting, or trying to position yourself in it – this is exactly where things get non-trivial.
I do 1-hour sessions on this – strategy, positioning, where to play and how to structure it:
https://zcal.co/axlindholm/1hour
Curious – will AI reduce services… or just reshape them?
#AI #consulting #futureofwork