"How AI Is Shaping Our Founders’ Journeys"
AI is reshaping industries, economies, and everyday life. At CLP, we asked ourselves a simple but important question: beyond the headlines, how is AI really affecting the companies we work with? Is it fundamentally shifting their business models, or is it mostly a tool for efficiency gains at the margins?
To find out, we went straight to the source: our founders. We asked them to share how AI is influencing their strategy, operations, sales and product development, customer experience, and approach to risk. The answers were diverse because no two businesses approach or apply AI in the same way, but clear themes emerged.
Strategy: Exploring New Avenues of Value
Across the board, founders are exploring how to capture AI’s upside while keeping a close eye on its value creation. Some are redesigning workflows to cut costs and unlock efficiencies. Others are testing AI agents in sales channels or customer touchpoints, layering on personalised experiences that improve incrementally as the system learns.
We also saw a strong push toward AI-powered automation, not just to reduce costs, but to help clients scale and compete more effectively and maintain high-quality service at speed. This isn’t about shiny new tools for their own sake. It’s about aligning AI with business fundamentals: efficiency, customer satisfaction, and growth.
Risk: Managing the Unknown
Naturally, risk remains top of mind. What stood out was the practical and often innovative way our founders are mitigating them.
Case Examples on Risk Mitigation from the CLP Portfolio
Preserving product integrity by maintaining human oversight – Development teams are using GitHub Copilot to improve productivity, while keeping humans in the loop. Automated agents are not permitted to change code independently; all changes require verification, which protects code quality, product integrity, and security.
Brand integrity via ethical firewalls – Some companies are deploying "social and ethical firewalls" to screen both AI inputs and outputs. This ensures brand-safe content and aligns AI interactions with company values.
Responsible AI development in payroll – A payroll management platform applies the same structured development lifecycle to AI features as it does to its core product. It has implemented guardrails to ensure AI functionality is used appropriately, minimising the potential for misuse and unexpected costs.
Cross-functional oversight via SEALS – One company has established a cross-functional SEALS (Safety, Ethics, AI, Legal, and Security) group. Comprising leaders from legal, compliance, IT, product, engineering, and marketing, the group meets monthly to review policies, assess emerging risks, and ensure ongoing alignment with best practices.
Rather than waiting for problems, they’re building resilience into their systems now. What impressed us most wasn’t just the tools founders are using, it’s their mindset. They’re treating AI like any other strategic lever: weighing upside against risk, experimenting where it makes sense, and protecting their brands as they go.
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