The Digital Project Manager

Why the Biggest AI Winners Haven’t Been Founded Yet

• Galen Low

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AI is moving fast—but the underlying challenges aren’t new. In this episode, Galen sits down with Eugina Jordan to unpack what today’s AI boom can learn from past transformations like 5G. From tool overload to shaky business models, they explore why the winners of this wave won’t just be the biggest players—but those who can turn AI into real, usable value for everyday people.

They also dig into what AI actually unlocks for small and medium-sized businesses, why “ordinary people” may be the biggest beneficiaries, and how the next wave of innovation might already exist—just waiting for the tech to catch up.

Resources from this episode:

Galen Low:

The current push for AI transformation has been disruptive for almost every industry, and it's been a lot. But it's easy to forget that we've been through disruptive transformation before, and we'll almost certainly go through it again. For today's episode, I've brought in someone who has led a lot of transformation in the telecom space, including a wee little disruptor called the 5G Network that unlocked everything from being able to track your Uber Eats order in real time, to your VR gaming addiction. We're going to be discussing everything from how to avoid tool overwhelm without getting left behind, to how smaller businesses can use AI to compete with giants, and why it might be time to dust off that great idea you had before Vibe coding was a thing. Hope you enjoyed this one. Welcome to The Digital Project Manager Podcast — the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Okay, today we are talking about what AI truly unlocks and why the true beneficiaries of AI may not even know it yet. We're going to put AI through the lens of decades of transformation in the telecom space and unpack the implications of AI for small and medium sized businesses. And then we'll be making some hypotheses about how AI will change the way smaller organizations will compete with larger enterprises in the not so distant future. With me today is Eugina Jordan, CEO and Founder of YOUnifiedAI. Eugina is an award-winning B2B CMO, author and inventor who came up through the world of telecom during the 3G to 4G, and then 5G transformation. Over her 23 year career, she's built a reputation for her ability to innovate, build, grow, and scale. Today she holds 12 patents in the areas of 5G, OpenRAN, and AI, and is in the beta stages of building an AI native platform for small and medium sized businesses that connects disconnected tools and data to drive growth without the traditional overhead. Eugina, thank you so much for being with me here today.

Eugina Jordan:

Thank you so much for having me.

Galen Low:

It's such a pleasure. I've loved our chat so far. I love getting to know you and I'm excited to dive in. I think we could probably go all over the place. I know we have in the past and I'd love for that to happen, but just in case the project manager in me is like, okay, here's the roadmap that I've sketched out for us today. To start us off, I just wanted to like set the stage by hitting you with like a big hairy question that my listeners want your hot take on, but then I'd like to zoom out from that and maybe just talk about three things. Firstly, I wanted to talk about what you took away from your experience in telecom transformation, like the 5G Revolution, and how that has influenced the way you look at the current state of AI transformation. Then I'd like to dive into how connecting tools and data with AI is an emergent enabler that changes the game for small and medium sized businesses. And then lastly, I'd just like to dive into your vision for unified AI and some of your hypotheses around what the competitive landscape will look like in the near future. And also that question, right? Like who is going to benefit the most from AI in the long run? How does that sound to you?

Eugina Jordan:

Sounds good. Let's do it.

Galen Low:

Alright, let's go. I thought I'd start off with like one big hairy question and I'll just take a running start at it. Right now. The folks in my community are reaching a new stage of like tool overwhelm. They're used to having lots of tools to glean insights about their projects and their operations and their business. But now with AI tools and features custom gpt and everyone's like home brew, vibe coded apps, flooding their headspace. They're a bit at wits end. So my big question is, in the end, will AI mean that we'll have more tools or less tools? And in any case, are we at risk of using an incredibly powerful enabling technology to simply enable our very human obsession with just having too many tools?

Eugina Jordan:

This is such a great question. So let me take you back to mid nineties when there were so many websites coming on the market. It felt overwhelming, right? And then we sift through those websites and we ended up with the ones that work for us. I see same happening in the tool space and that's why I'm building a company that helps to eliminate 20 tools, traditional tools, SaaS, and then five, you know, 10 AI tools. So I agree with the overwhelm. I have a newsletter and so many news coming out. It is challenging just to keep up so to. Avoid the overwhelm is to put a project manager hat on. And decide what are those tools are being used for. If it's a AI, for the sake of AI, because everyone is talking about the new cool tool or whatever. It's not gonna work. Any AI tool needs to support automation of a workflow, for example. And when you look at the AI tools through that lens, then you become calmer.

Galen Low:

I like the framing of, you know, going back to the nineties and as you were saying that all my sort of like earlier life trauma around GeoCities and like Angel Fire, you know, everyone's building a website, you know, all the animated gif and it was exciting. Don't get me wrong, it was overwhelming. And I do think you're right, we have distilled that into what is useful, to the point where even like my friends in, you know, user experience design, it's like a codified language now of like what a website looks like. Whereas it used to be, it could be anything and it was flying at you from left and right. And to your point, the most useful things that stayed, that we sort of built systems around, that we built, you know, our ways of working around. Now actually, you know, if you sent younger me from the nineties to today, I'd be like, wow, the internet is boring but useful. So I think that's like a calming, reassuring take. I don't know, for my listeners or for you, if you have a whole bunch of like HD DVDs, you know, on the shelf after Blu-ray took the main stage and now you know, I don't even have a way to play a Blu-ray. In other words, in some cases we're like. Betting on technology and we're like having our allegiances and we're picking tools in some cases and investing in them to be our like, you know, forever tool. But then like the market shifts and it's not even a thing anymore. Like is there a way to kind of avoid that? How do you help organizations and individuals make good decisions about what tools they are choosing to invest in?

Eugina Jordan:

That is a great question because before Microsoft, if we're talking about nineties, I think that's gonna be the theme, right? There were a lot of notes before Facebook, there was MySpace, so it's not necessarily the desk tool will win. It's the tool that delivers the best user experience and meets the need. So remember the MySpace UX and Facebook ux, very different ones. And how many clicks were in MySpace versus Facebook? So the tools that you're selecting today, they're gonna be here for a while, so select the tool that you are comfortable with meeting your needs for today. Grow with that tool. And if in the future you need to switch for whatever reason, because it's like my space is gonna, I think it still exists, right? So I'm not gonna say that. Instead, you will move, don't select for the future. No one can predict the future. So select for today, build for today, plan for today. Put the process in place, KPIs in place, and build for the next two to three years. Don't think what's gonna happen, you know, in five years from now, and I know it's a very untraditional way at looking at things. But if you always think about the future tools, think about your vision for the future. Manifest who you wanna be, not the tools that gonna get you there. Select the tools for today that might be able to support your future vision of tomorrow.

Galen Low:

I love that and totally fair. No one's got a crystal ball. And actually it's funny because, you know, I respect the approach from some tool companies where they're like, you don't want to have to re-platform, like, invest with us. We're gonna be your long haul. But at the same time, you know, especially, you know, in the spaces, the circles that you and I travel in, right? It's like, why don't we just get good at switching platforms? Because we don't really know what the future's gonna hold. We can plan for it and we can make it a little bit less painful. But it would be a mistake to say, well, we've just used this tool for so long, so I guess we should just keep using it, even though it doesn't get us to our vision, even though it's not as useful as the other thing.

Eugina Jordan:

No, remember how in the fifties and sixties and even seventies, you stayed with one company for your whole life, and then at the end you go to Gold Watch? Right? And then you retired. So that mentality with your tools needs to go away.

Galen Low:

That's actually a really good segue. I wondered if we could zoom out a bit, and I wanted to take advantage of the fact that you've worked as a CMO in what is, in my opinion, one of the most constantly transforming industries. When you look over the past like century, that industry is telecom, a lot has been shifting, A lot has been changing. I thought maybe I'd ask you like what makes the current wave of AI transformation different from things like building the five D network or like the advent of self-optimizing networks. Is it the same challenges in a different costume, or is this like a whole new frame of mind?

Eugina Jordan:

Same challenges, different costume.

Galen Low:

Okay.

Eugina Jordan:

You put it so well. So it's around two pillars, always around two pillars, because we don't realize as 5G, you know, phone users that the investments that were made in the last 10 years in 5G, they were not realized by mobile operators. And that's why we're probably not gonna see 6G anytime soon because the revenue is not there for 5G. So. With this AI technology, generative AI, we need to make sure if we are building with AI on top of AI, that the revenue for the users is there. News came out today that OpenAI needs for the next four years, before 2030. They need $430 billion just to survive.

Galen Low:

Oh wow. Okay.

Eugina Jordan:

And of course they're gonna get money from Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, right? So they're going to get those money pumped in. Other companies don't have that luxury. So to zoom out and with my telecom hat on, you are never too big to fail if you don't serve your customer and you don't take care of your customer. You don't generate money by taking care of your customer, you're gonna fail.

Galen Low:

I like that perspective. I wondered if we carry that through. Like I got a pretty light exposure to 5G transformation in a past life and you know, we were talking about things like doing remote surgery, right? We're having the precision to actually operate machinery. You could be a surgeon doing five surgeries a day in five different countries. You know, we were talking about, you know, like a lot of sort of real time healthcare. We were talking about, you know, the impact to autonomous vehicles and to hear you say that there might not be a 6G anytime soon. And that sort of ROI, it makes me think about taking 5G as an example, is 5G latent on realizing all of the value, all the promises that it made to all these industries. Is it maybe not living up to what it was sold as? And is that maybe one of the driving forces behind, you know, why it is hard to sustain because the value and the ROI hasn't necessarily been fully realized? Or is that maybe just like natural and normal and then transplanting that onto AI? Like, are we risking the same thing to like, we've hyped it all up and then when people realize that maybe it's not gonna suddenly. Create all these things that we've been talking about, that it's gonna take time, but there's gonna be other blockers in the way that maybe adoption will slow and as a result, investment will slow and as a result the technology will stall. I think somewhere in there was a question, or maybe four.

Eugina Jordan:

It's all good. So as you were talking and I was looking at my phone, the way mobile operators grew in the 5G Air and even in the 4G Air. Is by selling a device plus service. So a device came with a mobile subscription and it's got saturated because people, you know, how many phones do you need? How many iPads do you need, right? So the penetration of mobile devices is at the top of, you know, in, especially in the US and other countries as well. So the only way to generate money for mobile apparat is to get the return on the investment 5G, especially because 5G investment includes spectrum. And spectrum is expensive as hell because government always takes, you know, a billion dollar cuts. The only way is users may not gonna get more subscriptions. One is good enough for me finding those use cases. The use cases are mobile surgery not gonna happen because it's challenging. What other operators doing interestingly, is they provide wireless home service and that's how they grow. Maybe with the advance of physical AI, which is Roberts. And again, news came out this morning. Ellen Musk has shutting down production of. Tesla certain models because he's gonna change the his factories to produce robots. So robots will need connections. So maybe it's another opportunity for 5G to be implemented. And I'm not talking about private 5G because that's a big flow as well. I'm talking about. Connecting physical AI components, and they're your robots. They are your fridges. They are your cleaning robots, or whatnot. So maybe that's where it's gonna go, because I'm a businesswoman. You're a businessman. You are not gonna bring products to market unless customers. Pay for it and OpenAI. They are losing billions. You know, who's not losing billions on their products?

Galen Low:

Tell me.

Eugina Jordan:

Google, Gemini, because they have a nice, you know, revenue stream and they only spend on AI about 26%, and they own the distribution layer. So unless you have big pockets and you're an established company, you are not gonna win in developing the frontier models and then giving it to users like you and me. OpenAI, I pay them 20 bucks, they're probably losing money on me.

Galen Low:

They're like, please don't prop so much. Our margins are being eroded.

Eugina Jordan:

Exactly. This, you know, super user in South Carolina, we're gonna cut her off. So, and that's a challenge and what OpenAI needs to learn and new companies from mobile operators let's, you know, take a full circle, all you can eat plans, they're not sustainable.

Galen Low:

That's really interesting, like framing it back like as a challenge. That is the same challenge wearing, you know, a different costume. The business model has to make sense. And in some ways, you know, there's talk about the AI bubble. You know, there's a lot of people throwing a lot of money at this with a very vague idea of return because it's so transformative. It's gonna change the world. Everything's gonna be AI eventually. Like how could this not be a good investment? You know, we are pioneers, but at the same time, that challenge of like. Keeping that business model going, making it affordable for people to actually use. Tying it to use cases that people actually want. Maybe trying to avoid the current hardware trap with mobile devices where you just need to buy a new iPhone like every two years, and that's how they're kind of making that business model run. But I think it's a really important point for people to think about whether they're business people or not, to understand that there's these economic constraints and economic flywheel that will. Be worth paying attention to in terms of how you're placing bets on your own personal AI transformation, or for your business's AI transformation or for how you're changing the way that you work. Like you said at the outset, no one's got a crystal ball. You just have to understand the vision of where you're trying to go and not get swept too much into all the nitty gritty.

Eugina Jordan:

Yes. And also thinking about the regulations and ethics, so it's not just the economics, but what model to use. Like for example, xAI Grok model. The recent news about the images that it created, it's in millions and millions of users were, you know, created into those horrible images without their consent as a business owner. It might be the best model out there. Do I wanna attach myself to an unethical model? That's as well. There's so many layers we need to think of when we're selecting our AI tools. So there's this website and it called, there is an AI for that.

Galen Low:

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Eugina Jordan:

So you can go and you can find, you know, any type of AI. Then you need to do your own research. Maybe go on Reddit and do a research from all those lenses as a user. It's not just economics, is it gonna use your data? TikTok recently changed hands and they updated their user agreement. So, and now they're gonna, you know, use your data to train models. So you need to be aware. Are you okay with that? You know, are they doing ethical things? And Reddit is a wonderful platform to do all that research because there are people that's done that.

Galen Low:

Plus Reddit for its, you know, frank transparency through anonymity. I actually really like that take. Yes, I agree. It's not just economics. We are in some ways voting with our dollars. There's ethical dilemmas ahead as there were with any transformation. And in this case, you know, it's very widespread. It's impacting everyone everywhere, all at once, which makes it a little different, but. The challenges are still somewhat the same. I wondered if we could zoom out a little bit and talk a bit about your company YOUnifiedAI, because when we were chatting earlier, you were telling me that you are in the beta stages building your own AI native platform and it synthesizes insights from disparate and disconnected tools and data sources. So, you know, you yourself are gonna show up on, there's an AI for that as a tool that's sort of plugs things together. I was wondering like, could you walk me through. Why connecting tools and data into this AI native business engine is a game changer, specifically maybe for small and medium sized businesses, like what makes it different from other platforms claiming to be that central source of truth and what does it enable that wasn't possible before.

Eugina Jordan:

Really great question. I just got off the meeting with my founding engineer and we were talking about, you know, commercial product that we're launching in April, and then features and the sales motion, of course, and the demos we're gonna do for investors. So the difference of our platform, it can be. Apply to small to medium sized owners and it also can be your AI integration platform. So let me walk you through a day and I'm gonna use my husband who is a business owner and he was one of my beta testers. And it was, you know, among others, it was brutal because he's a non-technical person and he doesn't understand that something that he wants. Might take two months of engineering to build and you cannot vibe code. You know that complexity. He deals and business owners or enterprise owners from one person to, I dunno, 500 person companies, they deal with 12 disconnected tools. So they get them the morning. They have to look at their finance tool, their marketing tool. Then there's an AI on top and it's, you know, the mass gets multiplied and then the data was not updated. So they have to call someone and ask. And then there's an Excel, and then there is Notion and Google Doc and this. So it's overwhelming and the data doesn't sync because Google is not gonna open their platform to exchange data with Microsoft platform. So it's all fragmented. So he has literally six tab open, and then there's, you know, two AI tools that he uses, and none of it talks to one another. So when you use our platform, it's built for non-technical users when not an automation platform like Zapier make, where you can go and put different, you know, rules and you are sophisticated user. It's built for busy professionals, business owners like my husband, very impatient. So you go in, you connect all your disconnected tools, and you can ask, did I generate money yesterday? Why didn't I generate money yesterday? Oh, because you didn't send this invoice to this customer, or you entered this lead in your HubSpot. Or whatever, the marketing platform, and you never followed up on that lead or this customer send you an email and they showed intent of closing this deal and you never entered them. So our platform, it's, you know, structured data and intent as well. So instead of looking at six tabs, you look at our platform and you talk to it.

Galen Low:

That bit I like, what I like about that framing is that, you know, you mentioned it earlier like yes, there are low code and no code automation tools. Yes, there's vibe coding. Yes, there's all these things, but in some ways it creates this sort of layer where it kind of. Requires some technical mindset or ability, which frankly, you know, not everyone has that technical level of understanding and sometimes that's their superhero advantage, right? And so there's this one lane that almost looks like it goes, okay, well everyone has to be a systems thinker, a systems engineer. And I know that's your customer base would be quite broad, but even if you are a, you know, a small grocery store owner, or even if you are an independent consultant, even if you are, you know, in. I don't know. Landscaping doesn't mean you have to be left behind. I think. I know a lot of businesses feel that pressure. I'm in the digital space, so the pressure is to be ahead. But even in the circles I travel in with my friends, you know, they're feeling that pressure to be like, gosh, yeah, it's accessible to everyone, but I don't have what it takes to take advantage of this technology. I just want something that I can talk to that's gonna given the answers and yes. In theory, businesses can build that. But there is a, like you said, the complexity of the data. B, stringing the tools together that don't talk to each other, that don't wanna talk to each other. And C, just like having, like you said earlier, the use cases, the vision and the intent for, you know, what I want this tool to do based on the way I work, not necessarily the way other businesses work. So I like that it's open that up and that you actually are catering to that layer of folks who are, they wouldn't consider themselves the most sophisticated technical AI user. That's really neat.

Eugina Jordan:

Yeah, and they don't need to be because they have a business to run. They cannot go back to school and learn AI. I believe that any type of technology needs to give powers to ordinary people, and that's what AI needs to do. Put power into the hands of ordinary people. And when it does that, like computers did that right? In the last 35 years, computers put power into the hands of those business owners, and that's what AI needs to do. The challenge is it's moving so much faster than computers. So with my platform, I'm gonna put that power back into their hands.

Galen Low:

I commend that also because that thing you said where it's like it's moving fast. I was talking with someone yesterday, you know, we were talking about AI time and I think that's arguably one of the things that is very different about this. Not only is it kind of impacting things everywhere, but it is making us move fast. We were already moving fast. So like business owners who are listening, you know, freelancers who are listening, like we are hustling all the time. And to your point, all of those use cases you mentioned, you know, might have a chuckle at it, but I'm chuckling because they're all very relatable. I'm that person who needs that tool that's gonna be like, yeah, it's your fault you didn't collect more revenue yesterday, because listen, you have this long list of, you know, account receivable that you need to kind of go through, right? And you need to be on top of it all. There's a lot of businesses running very lean, people wearing lots of hats, and it doesn't feel like there's an opportunity to slow down without sort of, you know, getting caught up in the wheels. And I think AI compounded on that. Like that's not AI's fault. That was already there in the way small and medium businesses are being run. And then AI was like, Hey, you can use me to transform your business and compete with the big guns. But to do that, you almost have to pause. And, you know, learn enough that you can benefit from this. And what I like about what you mentioned is that like, yeah, unified AI is kind of that middle ground where it's like, yes, you don't have to like pause for months, you know, put your business on hold, learn like to be more technical, become a more sophisticated technology user, and then you can compete with the big ones. It's like you can actually do it in parallel, like, let's get this plugged in.

Eugina Jordan:

Yeah. Well said. Innovation has never been about technology, it's always been about giving ordinary people superpowers, and I strongly believe that this is what AI needs to do because we created so many tools. They are surrounded by technology, and technology is betraying them. So the only way that technology will support ordinary people. And the only way that AI will change this world, it's if it will help ordinary people, they will rewrite the future of AI.

Galen Low:

I love that. And actually, it's a good segue because in our prep call, if I recall correctly, we went on a tangent a bit about refrigerators and what that technology unlocked for. Everything from just having cold beverages to like grocery stores and, you know, transporting sensitive materials and beyond. I wanna kind of dig into that because you know, we're talking about giving everybody superpowers and in some ways I know there's this sort of like mindset of oh yeah, the big winners are gonna be OpenAI and big tech, and like, you know, we're just gonna be users of their technology. But in your opinion, like are we maybe being a bit shortsighted about what AI will do for us in the long run? Who are the mystery beneficiaries of AI who don't even know it yet?

Eugina Jordan:

Those companies, they probably haven't been born yet because I know I used the example of the refrigeration that companies that generated most money were companies like Coke and Pepsi, and because they were able to put those unions and gas station stores and whatnot, I'm gonna use example of Uber. Uber idea came when 3G Technology was around, so remember 3G was very slow because it's, you know, it was sort of a mixture of two G and 4G ip, you know, transmission. And the founders of Uber, they knew about 4G conning. What they realize that with, you know, an app on the phone, if you order an Uber. On 3G, it's gonna take minutes, and minutes for you to get your car. So the technology was not ready yet when 4G started being deployed. That is when Uber. Started growing because the technology was ready. So AI, current generative AI is not ready for Ubers yet, or the future Uber. So the idea might exist and that company might become very prominent and two to three years from now, the idea is there. AI is not ready with hallucination or latency or some other issues. The idea though, is there, so in three years when the technology is there, there will be new Uber.

Galen Low:

I love that model overall. Just in terms of like innovation and like enabling technology. For my listeners, a wee little bit of my background is in film and you hear stories of like scripts that have been kicked around the industry for like a decade, but it's just not ready yet. James Cameron, you know, being a huge example of this, where, you know, movies like Titanic or Avatar, the story was there, the idea was there, but the technology wasn't there. You know, we're gonna make something, it's gonna look terrible, which, we're not ready yet. We're not ready for this story to be told in this way, but let's not abandon it. And as you were speaking, I was like, yeah, you know what, now's a perfect time for, especially entrepreneurs, but anybody really, any ordinary person who had that silly idea, go and dust them off right now because that silly idea that was not possible whenever you know, thought of it. Might be possible now and or to your point, we're on AI time now. Things are moving fast. It could be possible in three years and it might not be so silly in 2030, you could be the next Uber.

Eugina Jordan:

A hundred percent, and they can vibe code a prototype, and they can get that idea out there. So I love what you said, go dust that out and see that maybe you will meet the technology and the market somewhere.

Galen Low:

What I like actually is like almost the flywheel that you've painted out. Tell me if I'm understanding this correctly, but way I'm seeing is this okay for folks who are operating or even working within a smaller, medium sized business where it is a bit of a hustle, right? It's like it's hard to stop running. You're on a treadmill, you stop running. You're on the other side of the room. Your competitors are getting ahead. There's no time to pause. You're working really lean. Even if you did have a great idea sitting there in the filing cabinet, to be able to sit down and prototype something and then take it to market or even like test it out to shop it around, even that it's not that viable. Then you plug in a tool like YOUnifiedAI that's going to help you operate your business. It's gonna give you as an ordinary business person, or ordinary professional superpowers so that you do have bandwidth to start thinking about, you know, not just reacting to, you know, your day-to-day business operations, but actually being able to pause and think about something and flesh out an idea that could be. Taken around, shopped around. It could be that either side hustle for an individual or that new offering for your business that you would otherwise not have been able to, you know, spend time on. And then it gets me back to the crux of this and where I really wanted to take it was that it's an enabling technology. So just like 5G technology wasn't an enabling technology. Generative AI is a very strong enabling technology. We're talking about giving ordinary people superpowers. And at the start I was like, you know, I wanna like dive into how this changes. The marketplace, like could this change the marketplace? So I wondered if maybe we could like look out into the future. Maybe it's a good place to round out. You know, part of your platform is at least somewhat loosely about like leveling the playing field for small and medium sized business owners through innovation. And presently, yes, we are living in a world where smaller fish, like they have to carve out niches around like the much larger scale global enterprises. You know, your OpenAIs, your Metas, your Microsofts, with technologies like your platform and others like it, how do you see the competitive business landscape changing over the next five to 10 years? Like what industries will be the most impacted and what can businesses of any size do to kind of get prepared for that?

Eugina Jordan:

Great question. Remember early 2025 when Salesforce launched? Agents and they became agent force. And then as the year progressed, people were not ready to buy agents. So in five years, I think we will have the agent force in robots that will help us with tasks at home. I wish I could have a chef. Right? Right. So I think. What will stick And going back to Elon Musk, the reason he's changing his factory to produce robots because he sees where the market is going. He was right with Tesla, you know, he delivered the first Nvidia chip to OpenAI 10 years ago when we didn't even know what OpenAI was. And I think that's where generative AI and robotics, physical AI will meet. And I see Alon is moving there. I don't see, because it's not visible, it doesn't mean it's not happening. Google might be, you know, they might working in that area as well because. Again, last year they were behind OpenAI and boom, they came out and they're like, okay, OpenAI, hold my beer. So what I am saying is ordinary tasks, that's where innovation will be happening. Things like laundry, cooking, cleaning. And companies that will survive, obviously companies that have revenue will survive and not a lot of debt because if we go back to 2007 and eight financial crisis, Lehman Brothers were too big to fail. And where's Lehman Brothers now? Because they were saturated with death. So again, it all comes down to number one, solving problems for ordinary people. And having a business model number two. That will help your company to survive.

Galen Low:

It's an interesting perspective. That notion of too big to fail is something that's still very pervasive today. I think you have some good examples to the contrary, and there's a world where, you know, even though right now it looks like smaller businesses. We'll just need to carve out, you know, their space and that the big tech giants, the mega corporations are just gonna, you know, Lord over the marketplace and hold all the cards. There's still actually a possibility that some of the giants we're looking at today have overextended in terms of their investment. You know, may or may not have made sound decisions around where the technology will take us and how quickly, and how. Like much people will use it. That could level the playing field itself. And then I like that other idea, and I think it's that current existential question anyways, which is like all those things that are holding you back from doing the things that you wanna do or achieving what you wanna achieve, what are you gonna do if we can take those away? What are you gonna do with the extra time not spent doing laundry? And not just as a business owner, but even as a professional. Like what are you gonna do with that time? How are you going to redeploy your time and energy to achieve something else? And I think that's like a big question mark for a lot of folks who hadn't really given it all that much thought. It's like, I could do more if I had more time if I didn't have to go grocery shopping. Okay, great. Well, and now we've got groceries that can get delivered. We've got stores where you don't even have to check out. You just walk out. It's gonna, you know, bill your account. Now what? Right. And it's like we have to look inwards. And I do literally mean, I think that there's a bunch of folks with some great ideas that they have been told are silly, that they have told themselves they're silly, that they don't think are possible or viable. But at the speed that AI is moving at and other technologies, they might not be that silly and they might not be that impossible soon. And some of it's actually just about timing. Maybe it's not what's not possible, it's about what's not possible yet.

Eugina Jordan:

A hundred percent. Love that. How many times Walt Disney was declined, right? He visited 300 banks.

Galen Low:

We're not sure about this Mickey Mouse character.

Eugina Jordan:

And look at, you know, what we have now. He created the whole empire, his company obviously, movies and experiences and magic. And you see there is a.

Galen Low:

Ah yes, Cinderella suffer on your shelves.

Eugina Jordan:

So, but what I'm saying is, if AI or robots or whatever the future of technology gives us the time back, let's not spend it doing this crawling. Let's spend it either. With our loved ones or building something that we thought was impossible. Let's give our ideas a chance.

Galen Low:

Love that. Love the Disney example as well. I'm thinking of to tie it all the way back actually, you set out and said it's about having it clear vision. It's about understanding use cases that are gonna be useful for, you know, ordinary people, Disney, you know, whether you like the company or not. Today. It's a great example of a very clear vision, right? Bringing joy and delight to the human experience. You know, they have their engineering department, I think they're called imagineers. You're literally engineering, in some cases, robots to create a joyful experience. That's the vision that's very crystal clear, and it is something that is. You know, for better or worse for everyone, you know, it's like we do crave that delight. We do crave that joy. You know, this is for ordinary people. It has mass appeal and no matter what happens technologically or with the marketplace in between, you know, the one thing that we can credit Disney with, or at least I think I can, is just having that clarity of focus around that vision and like sticking to it and that's what can end up prevailing.

Eugina Jordan:

Yep. Create something that people will love giving you money for.

Galen Low:

Yeah. There you go. Perfect. Eugina, thank you so much for this. Just for fun, do you have a question that you wanna ask me?

Eugina Jordan:

Yes, I actually do. So here's a question for you. What's a question you wish more of your listeners would ask themselves, but most don't.

Galen Low:

That's a great question. I think especially around AI, but maybe with all things, I kind of wish that I was having more conversations that my listeners would be having more conversations about, like a bit of an optimistic future. We don't have to be naive about it, but I really wish people would ask themselves like, what could go right about this? I think there's a lot of, you know, fear and anxiety and pressure and some of what's happening in the world, technology and otherwise it's really scary. I wish we would ask ourselves, you know, what could the bright side look like? And even if we never get there, I think it would help us push forward a little bit with a little less cynicism, with a little less fear, and maybe give ourselves a vision of something to like move towards rather than just sticking to focusing on how to tackle all the negative challenges today.

Eugina Jordan:

I love that because as a startup founder, I worry a lot about, you know, I'm bootstrapping, so about survival and this and that, and I have healthy paranoia, you know, around competition and everything else. So maybe getting up in the morning and asking myself, what if things go well? That might take a little bit of anxiety of myself as well and my team. So what if things go well because it's a 50/50 chance, right?

Galen Low:

Yeah. I think it's that, that bhag, right? The big, hairy, audacious goal. It's Harry, it's audacious. It's big, but it's still directional. I think that's what you're talking about with the vision as well. Don't get me wrong, a healthy amount of paranoia is very useful, very needed, and it is probably the balance here from getting too naive. But yeah, I like that it ought to be a balance, but I do think we need to spend more time thinking about the art of the possible and what good looks like, even if we never get there. Eugina, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. It's been a lot of fun. For folks who wanna learn more about you, where can they go?

Eugina Jordan:

Interestingly enough, I am on TikTok. I've started a TikTok account and I post about Founder Journey and AI, so it's Eugina Startup Founder, so you can find me. Also LinkedIn, I have AI newsletter. We have a second wait list. We open for our second beta. It's on younifiedai.com, so you can sign up for the newsletter as well. So on all social channels, I have a small YouTube channel. I am everywhere, Facebook, Instagram. So whatever works for you because I wanna, as a business owner, as a startup founder, I wanna meet you where you are.

Galen Low:

Love that. You're very prolific, you're very plugged in. I'll include all those links in the show notes for folks who wanna follow along. And just wanna say thanks again, I love this conversation.

Eugina Jordan:

Thank you for having me.

Galen Low:

Alright folks, that's it for today's episode of The Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.