Speaker 1: We believe there's more creativity than ever before. So I
always look at the basics. You look at a company,
you look at their fundamentals, you look at their growth,
you look at the customers they have, and then you
look at the need of the product that they have
at market within the framework of the customer relationships that
they have, and if those things are in pact, then
you have a very stable business. Not because that business
has artificial intelligence, but because that business is solving a
commercial problem.
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Speaker 3: Ever, and welcome. You are listening to and watching the
Financial Survival Network host Carrie Luttz, Well, you're probably hearing
in the news see CNBC. All of the financial news
shows are all a buzz about AI, and it's getting
to the point where there's probably too many AI is
out there, too many companies chasing the AI rainbow. But
the real money is in the cleanup. Gartner says that
a genetic AI is already oversaturated meta plans to fully
automate AD creation this coming year, Google is collapsing creative
data and execution into one design layer. And the question
now isn't who builds AI, it's who controls the layer
that decides everything. And today we've got Jeremy Barnett, CEO,
co founder of rad Intel here to break down the
coming consolidation wave and the new AI power stack that's
about to reorder the entire higher marketing industry, PR communications
in general. Jeremy, great to have you on the show.
So tell us here, when does the AI crash happen?
Is it happening now? And does Nvidia have anything to
worry about?
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's a lot of there's a lot
of chatter. I mean, Nvidia has the numbers to back
up the valuation I think is for form. And if
you think about artificial intelligence at its hull, we're seeing massive,
massive adoption, which means our feeds are flooded with all
of this stuff. Some of it's great, some of it's
not so great. But if you think about it, humans
are ultimately driving all of this adoption. So we think
about this era that we're in is it's the era
of human creativity, and the right human practitioners using AI
technology can actually become significantly better at the thing that
they're trying to accomplish. Now there's commercial reasons, like doing
a better job creating content, there's also personal reasons like
how do I deal with my fifteen year old son
who's having issues with his performance coach for whatever sport
he plays. So it's really interesting how us humans are
deciding to use artificial intelligence. But everything always boils back
to the basics, and it's been the same basics for
considerable periods of time with respect to why companies are
or are not successful. Traction sustainable growth revenue that isn't
just sustainable, but having customers that want and need your
product because they depend on your product. That's ultimately what
rules the.
Speaker 3: Day, right, So I think what got everyone confused is
it's the AI has been around a long time, but
now it's out there for the general public. Yeah, you
hear about all these data centers being opened up and
all the electricity required, and that tends to distract from
the actual issue, which is the use case and how
many ais, do you know need? It really is reminiscent
of the AI of the dot com boom in the
late nineties, and we all know where that wound up.
We going to see a similar thing here. Well.
Speaker 1: The use cases are very similar, but there's also fundamental differences.
If you think about when cloud computing became the flavor
of the week, llms are very similar. From an infrastructure perspective.
You have all of this infrastructure that being built on
top of these llms, but everything always boils down to
the very fundamental basics of what is the commercial issue
that you're trying to solve. If you're a company that's
using artificial intelligence, whether you're adopting it internally to make
your customers' lives better, or whether you're adopting it internally
because you want to attract more customers. But at the
end of the day, what is the thing that you're
doing with the artificial intelligence? There has to be a
commercial use case. Having the word AI in your business
means app absolutely nothing unless there's some sort of value
that the artificial intelligence is creating. In the context of
my company, rad we leave the pen in the hand
of the practitioner. In other words, people that use our
product use our product to make them better at the
job that they do. We believe there's more creativity than
ever before. So I always look at the basics. You
look at a company, you look at their fundamentals, you
look at their growth, you look at the customers they have,
and then you look at the need of the product
that they have at market within the framework of the
customer relationships that they have. And if those things are intact,
then you have a very stable business. Not because that
business has artificial intelligence, but because that business is solving
a commercial problem.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, so AI for it. If I could just
paraphrase you, AI for AI's sake isn't really where it's at.
It's it's solutions based effectively.
Speaker 1: Have that right, I would one hundred percent agree with you, Carrie,
and I would even take it one step further. The
real edge and artificial intelligence is how humans not just
decide to adopt it, but how we decide to apply it.
You put a really powerful set of AI tools in
the hand of an unbelievably talented creative practitioner. Maybe he's
a designer or maybe she's a director, but you put
these tools their hands and they become even better at
the thing that they do by a ten x multiple.
Whereas if you put these same exact tools in the
hands of somebody who's performing at a more we'll call
it mediocre level, they're not all of a sudden going
to become this really high performing human being. Right, AI
doesn't make you bet. It's the creativity of the humans
that are using the artificial intelligence that makes them better
at the thing that they're doing. So I always say,
garbage in, garbage out, excellence in even more excellence out.
Speaker 3: I love that concept and I couldn't agree with you more. So,
where do you think the biggest trend is heading for
the next year, the next few years.
Speaker 1: Well, we always think about these things. We're looking at
this era of creativity as it's an opportunity to get
even more authentic. So the idea of understanding authenticity at
its core and the things that will mobilize your target
customers to take action, or even the things that will
motivate your teenager to do something because you know it's
good for them. So, the idea of creating this environment
where people are using technology in order to make not
just their professional but personal lives better that's where we
see everything going. So it's not just about a story
anymore or a vision anymore. It's about practical traction and performance.
Investors are shifting focus from looking at companies that have
potential to now they're demanding companies have real traction at
rad we look at basic fundamentals. You know, we have
an infrastructure here built that we look at companies and
we buy companies, and we buy companies. We don't look
at do they have AI. We don't look at well,
they could be this. We're looking at the core fundamentals
of this business. Are they even a positive? Do they
have great leadership? Will our artificial intelligence and technology solution
take their business to the next level? In other words,
will make material impacts to the p and L and
balance sheet? And if we can answer all of these
questions confidently, then we know this is a target we
should look at.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: The same thing holds true when you look at investing
and looking at different areas where you're going to potentially
lay some modest bets into, you have to just look
at the core fundamentals. Leadership. You know, I have an
investor who always tells me, I always bet on the
jockey critical. Good leadership starts and ends with good leadership
above and beyond that, does the business have basic fundamentals?
In other words, not just this big vision and AI
in their term, in their in their marketing materials, but
are they actually solving a problem that their customers are
willing to pay for? And this is true across all industries, healthcare, UH, medical,
medical treatments, brick and mortar businesses. It always boiled, It
always boils down to the basic brick and mortar rules
associated with leadership, a product that people want to buy
and positive ebita a company that's really moving towards something
that investors can back for the long term.
Speaker 3: All right, well, it makes a lot of sense. And
obviously AI, for AI's sake, is not going to get
you where you want to be. So question is how
do you invest in this? How do you identify the
emerging companies who are really going to go somewhere?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's lots of different ways to look
at it. I think, you know, we are in the
information age. So one of the things AI has enabled
us to do is we are able to be our
own practitioners of what we do and what we don't do.
So you know, if you're looking at alternative assets, there's
certainly really simple ways to research leadership and look at
their track record. That's the first thing I always do
when we're looking at anything is I want to understand
who the people are and what they've done and what
successes they've had. Above and beyond that, you look at
the basic fundamentals. And you know, in our case, rad
is a reggae plus regulated company, so everything we do
has to be filed with the SEC. So there's a
deep amount of due diligence in our offering before we
actually go to our investor community. So it's something that
we're really proud of, and it also helps us separate
from all of the noise that's out there. So there's
two different types of investment classes. You have your public securities,
then you have your alternative sets. Right public securities, it's
public information and we've all seen these really great public
companies fold at one point. So just because of companies
doesn't necessarily mean they've answered all of the things that
need to be answered. They still need to produce results.
In private markets, you have to look at companies that
actually have not just the fundamentals on or appearance of fundamentals.
To be able to look at reports, you've got to
be able to look at audited financials. You've got to
be able to look at a track record in history
before you decide to put your hard ended dollars into anything.
So I would strongly urge any investor that's looking at anything.
I mean, look, you're never going to be perfect with
every decision you make, otherwise we'd all be multi multi millionaires.
You can make some educated bets in different areas based
off of track record, based off of history, and based
off of reputable organizations given their stamp of approval. You know,
an SEC regulated Reggae plus is a really good stamp
of approval if you're looking at private investment, if you're
looking at private investment classes, because you know you have
to have due diligence and audited financials in order to
list in that kind of way.
Speaker 3: For sure, No, I totally get what you're saying. So
obviously you've done a lot of deals over the year.
Can you share with us the best deal you ever made?
Speaker 1: Well, the best deal I ever made? Well, this is
going to be well. I'm going to force my co
founder to watch this, so you know you know, so
what do we your well, what do you do in
your startup figuring out product market fit at the beginning
of COVID. In our case, we figured out a way
to merge h We acquired another artificial intelligence company and
they were having they were struggling with the product market fit.
It just so happens that what we were really good
at and what they were really good at was two
negatives equal in a positive. There So the best move
that wever made was acquiring a company by the name
of Atomic Reach, which now the former CEO of that
company is my co founder and president, and we've adopted
that product to be the current product that we have
in market, which is powering not just our internal growth
and adoption, but our entire strategic biostrategy, which is acquiring
new businesses. So in Rad's context, that was the best
decision at the time, everybody that knew me was doing
sanity checks with me, because you know, two early stage
companies don't necessarily equal a positive. This isn't a typical
math equation. Right now, looking back on it, by far
and away the best decision that we made, and there's
lots of different reasons why, but you know, a lot
of times as a singular founder in a business, the
ability to have another co founder in the business that
can share in the burden of all the issues and
challenges that you go through when you're growing your company.
I can't put a dollar value on that, aside from
that having the having the technology and the investment into
technology that came with that company as a part of
our overall offering. Stack today has really been a massive
differentiation for us and has really been not only a
differentiation but the reason why we've gotten such such good
adoption with the with the brands that matter.
Speaker 3: All right, I love it, and it's a very disciplined
and focused approach towards AI, which I think is completely
lacking in the market. Jeremy, where's the best place to
find you? Connect with you on the web?
Speaker 1: Well, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Jeremy Barnett,
CEO of rat Intel, Real easy. We also have a
portal for our investor community. We have abound eleven thousand
and investors today, ranging from Fidelity Ventures and Adobe to
folks that work over at Google and Meta and Amazon.
So you can go over to our investment page and
find us and if you want to reach out to me.
I make a point of being available to our entire
community of supporters. Our community is really one of the
main reasons why we've been able to do a lot
of the things that we do at Market today, and
we're really proud of that.
Speaker 3: All right, excellent. Hey, you've got any questions for Jeremy
or myself, shoot me an email kl at Carrie LUTs
dot com. You can find our substack at Carrie LUTs
dot com. Jeremy appreciate you coming on. We'll talk to
you and.
Speaker 1: Soon, Harry, take care of yourself. It was a player.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,