i love getting insights from zain
always alot of solid info on where to steer my attention
(i operate as an applied ai/fde)
This is what I'm seeing right now from over 50 AI projects at Lazer across commerce, fintech, healthcare, and SaaS enterprises
1. Fast growing AI platforms are still short on forward deployed engineering to convert customers, get them live fast, and feed learnings back to product... As they go self-serve, FDE role shifts closer to a strategist, and partner networks are filling the gap, but execution quality is still an issue
2. Most enterprises' main problem is just getting enabled and getting AI structured inside the org so everyone can cook... Tooling, governance, config, and education come before automating workflows
3. Orgs care about cost, but it's two ends of a spectrum: "just use it, we'll optimize later" or "show us ROI before we do anything"
4. Getting data out of people's heads and into a system AI can access is one of the hardest problems... It's not a one-shot fix, and requires orgs to change how they operate
5. Some orgs would rather build than buy, because they're unsure what changes in 3 months and want to avoid lock-in
6. Governance hubs are a real need now... Employees are using personal Claude/OpenAI accounts with company data, and financial and healthcare orgs won't move without a governed layer
7. Data readiness gates everything... Many companies need 2 to 4 months of foundational work before any application layer
8. PEs are moving fast because AI directly improves the P&L... That's why CX agents land so well... clean ROI, straight-line cost reduction, and off-hours revenue capture
9. AI SDLC and the software factory is our most popular project
10. Demand for private AI and data sovereignty is real, driven by IP, PCI/PHI, and cost at scale... "Who owns the intelligence" is a common question now
11. Data center buildout is an emerging area... Agentic software compresses spin-up, and the faster a data center launches, the more revenue
12. There are still so many non-AI problems to solve inside enterprises, easy to forget
Going to share more learnings over time, been too busy heads down building