Using AI to Turbocharge your Business

Written By Bella Brant

On Wednesday 26th February, we brought together our portfolio founders, investors and ecosystem partners to discuss AI applications and what strategies start-ups and small businesses can use to leverage AI for growth and operational efficiency. In a panel discussion hosted by the Conduit EIS Impact Fund, and in partnership with Cooley LLP, we discussed:

  • How founders can focus their AI strategy on solving specific business problems rather than implementing AI for its own sake

  • Why and how AI can significantly enhance efficiency in areas like fundraising, product development, and impact measurement

  • Ethical considerations around AI use (e.g. environmental impact, labour market effects) remain important challenges

  • Human expertise and creativity will remain crucial even as AI capabilities expand

  • Tips on how to maximise the output from the AI tools founders are using

  • Useful resources founders can use

Moderator: Gabby Morgan, Conduit EIS Impact Fund

Elisabeth Ling: Elisabeth is a Strategic Product Advisor and a Board Member with a proven track record of over 25 years driving commercial success and innovation in B2B SaaS, financial services, marketplaces, and e-commerce. She has held executive roles in VC and PE-backed startups as well as publicly listed companies, helping businesses scale, innovate, and achieve meaningful impact. Her expertise lies in Product and AI, from embedding algorithms into global platforms at eBay to managing over £1bn of B2B product revenue at RELX.

Jimmy Cockerton: Former Impact and Sustainability Lead at Microsoft where he spearheaded the UK Impact and National Transformation Program, focusing on ESG social value, and sustainability strategy. Jimmy is the founder of Impact Advantage – where he examines an NGO’s or Company’s impact across four capitals: Financial, Human, Natural, Social. Impact Advantage can then align their findings with trusted global standards - such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals - to calculate in monetary terms the impact an NGO or Company has.

Caspar Eliot: Caspar is the VP of Solution at Invisible Technologies where he built the solutions engineering function from a team of two. At Invisible, they help enterprises cut AI training costs by 90% while improving accuracy- covering all verticals and covering technical sales, advisory and consultative engagement.

AI Strategy for Startups

As a starting point, panellists suggested founders can begin by identifying key business problems/weaknesses rather than arbitrarily implementing AI. In practical terms, this looks like:

  • Assessing current workflows to find opportunities for AI-driven efficiency gains

  • Working together with their team to break down the problems that can be realistically quantitatively measured using AI

  • Encouraging and seeking out individuals in your workforce who are most excited about AI as they might be the best people in your organisation to help build an AI strategy

  • Experiment with AI tools to develop organisational intuition and be able to identify use cases

  • Understanding the baseline AI literacy of your organisation to identify what key training is required for team members

  • Impact measurement specialist, Cockerton, advised founders to aim to strike balance in experimenting with AI tools vs. with pragmatic business applications. Founders should consider build vs. buy decisions carefully based on resources and core competencies.

Top Tip: Ling found AI tools can sometimes try to give the user feedback they want to hear, rather than the honest, critical feedback that may be more valuable. She suggested prompting the AI to provide the feedback you need to hear, even if it's not what you want to hear. Eliot added that this speaks to the importance of understanding the limitations of current AI systems and not blindly trusting their outputs, especially in high-stakes or important decision-making contexts. The human user needs to maintain a critical eye when leveraging AI assistants.

AI Applications for Business Growth

  • Fundraising: When it comes to fundraising, Cockerton says founders shouldn’t underestimate the power of AI. AI tools can assist with prospect research, email outreach, and financial modelling.

  • Product Development: AI can accelerate prototyping and testing of ideas.

  • Operations: Ling suggested a few resources (see below) to use for automating routine tasks and freeing up human talent for higher-value work.

  • Impact Measurement: AI has potential to streamline and enhance rigor of impact reporting – all panellists encouraged founders to explore AI applications for impact measurement and reporting.

Future of SaaS and AI

Ling shared her insights on the role of AI within SaaS. She highlighted that there are many more prototyping and validation tools available today compared to when she worked at companies like eBay and PayPal in the early days, making it easier to quickly test AI-powered ideas. She emphasised the need to differentiate user experiences especially in B2B/enterprise contexts, rather than simply relying on the underlying AI capabilities.

She says, whilst AI may disrupt horizontal SaaS solutions, deep vertical and specialized SaaS is likely to remain valuable. She added that user expectations for out-of-the-box functionality are likely to increase and that new pricing models may emerge (e.g. pay-per-interaction vs. subscriptions).

Ethical and Environmental Considerations

One of our Venture Partners in the audience, Molly Webb, raised a crucial question surrounding the environmental and ethical impacts of AI compute power which remains a major concern today. The discussion kicked off with our moderator, Gabby mentioning insights from Andrew Straight, Associate Director at Ada Lovelace Institute, who commented on the delta between what AI can do and how much businesses are using it, along with the delta between the complexity of AI and the compute power. The panellists pondered on whether these problems that AI can solve are ones that businesses really need and whether they will ever be used to the degree that justifies the climate impact.

Resources

Cooley LLP

This event was hosted in partnership with Cooley LLP - a full-service global law firm comprising lawyers with decades of experience working with both private and public companies across technology and life sciences sectors. They work with more than 7,000 innovative, high-growth private company clients and have unparalleled access to the largest and most influential network of venture capital investors in the world. Their capabilities span the full range of practice areas, giving Cooley the ability to advise a company throughout its entire lifecycle. To find out more, please email: natalie@theconduitconnect.com.

DISCLAIMER

This document is issued by The Conduit Connect FRN: 826000, an Appointed Representative of Enterprise Investment Partners LLP FRN:604439 / who are authorised by the FCA. This document is provided for informational purposes and should not be construed as an invitation to engage in investment activity and does not constitute a Financial Promotion. No reliance is to be placed on the information contained in this document. Information herein is not intended to, nor should be taken to, constitute advice.

 

Bella Brant
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