Manjeet Singh lives where AI hype meets real enterprise reality. He is the Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce AI and Agentforce, and previously led product teams at Iron Mountain and ServiceNow. He spends his days shipping AI products that millions of people actually use.

In this episode, Manjeet sits down with Ravi Belani to talk about what is really working in enterprise AI adoption, and where a lot of teams are still stuck in POC land.

They explore:

• The real state of enterprise AI and agentic adoption in 2025

• Why so many AI projects stall at proof of concept

• Where agents are already driving real KPIs, from software development to customer support

• How to tell if an AI opportunity is likely to deliver real ROI for an enterprise

• Why constrained, well defined workflows win first

• Vertical vs horizontal AI, and how to build more than “just an LLM wrapper”

• Why regulated and high cost of failure domains can be great markets for startups

• The missing “toolchain” for agents, from testing and evals to observability and tracing

• How to think about moats, domain expertise, and speed in the AI platform era

• Why Manjeet is excited about the intersection of AI, healthcare, and preventative fitness

If you are building, buying, or investing in enterprise AI, this conversation will give you a grounded view of what works, what does not, and where the next opportunities are likely to appear.

Marcelo Calbucci has been building tech for over 30 years. He’s a serial entrepreneur, multi patent holder, former engineering leader at Microsoft and Amazon, and someone known for having bold, contrarian takes on where AI is actually heading.

In this episode, Marcelo sits down with Ravi Belani to challenge some of the biggest assumptions people have about AI right now.

They dig into:

• Why layoffs and job freezes might have nothing to do with AI

• Why AI isn’t replacing software engineers anytime soon

• Where AI is being massively overused

• The areas where AI is actually underused and full of opportunity

• Why founders need to stop outsourcing strategy to LLMs

• How to use AI to disconfirm your ideas instead of chasing confirmation bias

• Why the next big wave of opportunities may come from “multiplayer AI”

• What roles AI is likely to replace, and which roles will remain essential

• Why adaptability will matter more than anything else in the next decade

Marcelo also shares which startup opportunities he’d pursue today, how he thinks teams will collaborate with AI agents in the future, and the one piece of advice he’d give founders in 6 words: We’re entering the world of adaptability.

If you want fresh, honest, and thought provoking perspectives on AI and the future of work, this conversation is a must watch.

Amr Awadallah has seen multiple waves of hype in tech and helped build real companies through it. He co founded Cloudera, took it public, watched it get acquired for 5.3 billion dollars, and is now building Vectara, a platform that helps enterprises ship AI apps that are accurate, safe and actually usable in production.

In this episode, Amr joins Alchemist Accelerator founder and CEO Ravi Belani to unpack a striking finding from an MIT report. An estimated 95 percent of enterprise AI projects are failing.

They dig into why that is happening and what to do differently:

• The real reasons enterprise AI fails in production
  

• Why “go do AI” from the board is not a strategy
  

• How fake exploration budgets create fake success stories
  

• The 3 whys every founder and buyer should test
  

• • Why do anything

  • Why now

  • Why this vendor
    

• How to tell a real business need from AI theater
  

• Why passion for the problem, not the tech, drives grit
  

• How cofounders, early hires and investors make or break your company
  

• What Vectara is building as an “operating system” for AI agents
  

• Why context, security, accuracy and cost control matter more than demos
  

Amr also shares raw, founder level advice. From firing fast in the first 50 hires, to choosing investors who have actually been in the trenches, to his simple test for whether you really love the problem you are working on.

If you care about building AI products that survive past the pilot stage, this conversation is a must listen.

Dr. Shelby Heinecke, Senior AI Researcher at Salesforce, joins Ravi Belani to explain why the future of AI will not belong only to giant models with hundreds of billions of parameters.

Shelby makes the case for small language models: compact systems with only a few billion parameters that can run faster, cost less, protect privacy, and still perform at a very high level when they are trained well on focused tasks.

In this episode, they dig into:

• Why small models are a different tool, not a weaker version of large models
  

• How fine tuned small models can beat much larger models on specific agentic tasks
  

• Where small models shine most: privacy, speed, cost to serve and on device use cases
  

• How Salesforce built “Tiny Giant,” a 1B parameter model that outperforms much larger models on selected tasks
  

• What really matters in training: data quality, workflows and trajectory style datasets
  

• How synthetic data, noise and guardrails help make models more robust in the real world
  

• Why founders should look closely at on device AI and domain specific small models
  

Shelby also shares practical advice for founders who want to build in the small model space, and closes with a simple takeaway: do not underestimate small models.

If you care about AI agents, privacy, edge computing or future startup opportunities, this conversation will give you a lot to think about.

Arjun Prakash, co founder and CEO of DistylAI, joins the Influencer Series to talk about one of the biggest shifts happening in tech right now. We all talk about generative AI, but Arjun breaks down the part that actually matters. Intelligence. Reasoning. And the rise of true AI assistants that can make decisions, take actions, and run workflows across a business.

Arjun walks us through the three chapters of this story:

1. What AI agents really are and why reasoning changes everything.

2. How AI native companies will operate with far lower costs and far more speed.

3. Why this shift will lead to a world where both massive companies and tiny startups can scale faster than ever.

He also gives clear examples of what happens when companies embrace new technology and what happens when they ignore it. From Carnegie Steel to Borders, the winners are always the ones who lean in early.

If you care about innovation, productivity, or the future of work, this episode will change how you see the next decade.

Yohei Nakajima is not your typical venture capitalist. He’s the Managing Partner at Untapped Capital and the creator of Baby AGI, the first open-source autonomous agent that helped kick off the AI agent movement.

In this episode, Yohei joins Ravi Belani (CEO, Alchemist Accelerator) to unpack the rise of AI agents in the enterprise and why experimentation — not just strategy decks — is the real competitive edge.

You'll learn:

• Why every business leader should be personally experimenting with AI

• How AI agents are evolving from gimmick to game-changer

• What it takes to spot high-potential AI startups early

• Why creativity, play, and community might be the keys to mastering this tech wave

Whether you're a founder, builder, or innovation leader, this episode is a must-listen if you want to stay ahead in the age of agents.

🎧 Tune in and let us know what you think: https://bit.ly/3H4XkiJ

As AI-powered copilots and agent tools reshape productivity, one question looms large: Will software engineers be replaced—or just evolve?

In this thought-provoking episode of The Influencer Series, Roger Luo, Founding Partner of Embedding VC and former AI leader at Yahoo, Snap, and Niantic, joins host Ravi Belani to explore:

• Why today’s LLMs outperform average coders—but still can’t replace human creativity

• What tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursors really mean for engineering productivity

• The untold challenges in orchestration, DevOps, and compliance

• How the line between “human” and “agent” might soon blur

• Why AGI won’t come from scaling LLMs alone—and what that means for the future

  
  

Whether you’re a founder, engineer, or AI strategist, this conversation offers a realistic and expansive look at the next era of work.

📣 We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Take 1 minute to complete our short feedback form: https://bit.ly/3H4XkiJ

What does it really take for international founders to succeed in the U.S.? In this episode, Laurent Rains, Managing Director at Alchemist Accelerator, joins host Ravi Belani to unpack the challenges and opportunities facing global startups today.

You’ll learn:

• Why diversity is a competitive advantage — but only if it’s real.

• What international founders must unlearn when entering the U.S. market.

• How AI is reshaping outbound sales and founder workflows.

• Why Silicon Valley still holds the edge in global innovation.

• The nuanced role of governments in startup ecosystems around the world.

  
  

Whether you're launching in a new market or scaling across borders, this episode is packed with sharp insights and global perspective.

We’d love to know what you think!
👉 Please take a minute to complete our short feedback form: https://bit.ly/3H4XkiJ