Steve Phillips started Zappi in his back garden with a bottle of wine, and twelve years later, he’d scaled it to 300 people and $80 million revenue.
Now he’s challenging the business to double revenue in five years without hiring anyone.
How?
Well, AI agents of course. Paired with every employee, they’ll be doing the time-consuming work that they hate.
I sat down with Steve to talk about a lot of things – including what’s actually happening with AI in businesses right now.
Some of what we covered:
The uncomfortable truth about AI adoption
Steve’s take: “Three years ago, we asked Gemini to write a poem and were amazed an AI could do that, now Gemini will build you a website that creates poetry books. We’re not even surprised anymore.”
Fact is, the models are doing amazing things but businesses aren’t utilising them yet.
What Zappi is doing with AI today
They’re using AI agents to:
→ Write quarterly business reviews (used to be a CSM’s job)
→ Create first drafts of client proposals based on sales data
→ Help clients innovate new products based on their data asset
→ Automate the annoying administrative tasks that drain productivity
The challenge he’s set the business
Double revenue, but don’t increase headcount.
That forces every department to ask: “How do I use AI to get rid of the tasks that take time but don’t add value?”
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Steve’s prediction:
In three to five years, everything will change, but it’ll be unevenly distributed.
Some companies will be at the forefront.
Others will still be buying old-fashioned services even when faster, cheaper, better options exist.