Most people think “tax season” starts in January and ends on April 15th (or October 15th if you’re waiting for those K-1s). But that’s filing season. It’s simply the administrative deadline for reporting what has already happened.

For founders, high-earning professionals and practice owners, the real tax season — and the only window where decisions still move real dollars — is Q4, October through December.

Many smart, successful people procrastinate tax planning because they feel like they still have time, or they assume their CPA can “fix it” in the spring. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the tax code works. Tax law is built on deadlines, and the most important one is the end of the “Tax Year” — December 31st.

Q4 is when you can still sign plan documents, strategically move money, harvest investment losses and lock in actions that legally and permanently lower what you owe. This is the period for action. If you wait until spring, the work becomes more about reporting than planning. You’ll find yourself paying a tax bill based on situations you could have changed — but didn’t.

Related: I Run a Portfolio of High-Growth Companies — This Practice Makes It All Possible

Q4 is when real tax strategy happens

Taxes feel expensive when they arrive as a surprise. The way to eliminate that sting is to treat Q4 like the closing sprint of your financial year. This is your last opportunity to look at your actual year-to-date data and strategically align your compensation, entity structure, retirement contributions and charitable giving.

This isn’t about checking off a list of isolated tactics. It’s an integrated process — each decision influences the others. For example, a large contribution to a new retirement plan reduces your taxable income, but it also affects your immediate cash flow. That cash flow position then influences your ability to prepay expenses or make a significant charitable gift. These are connected levers, and Q4 is your last chance to pull them in the right sequence to create the most favorable outcome.

What you can or cannot do is based on your source of income. Business owners, for instance, may be reimbursed based on their health insurance premiums via their W-2. Plus, they can contribute to their retirement accounts (401(k), IRAs, etc.) and conduct a Backdoor Roth Conversion (assuming they’re eligible and stay mindful of the pro-rata rule).

These business owners also make sure that any equipment, software or even vehicles for their businesses are purchased before the year is over.

In the case of high-income W-2 employees, the key optimization areas include maximizing 401(k) contributions (contribute a minimum of $23,500 in 2025, increasing to $24,500 in 2026), IRAs (contribute a minimum of $7,000 in 2025, increasing to $7,500 in 2026), HSA contributions, spending remaining FSA funds, completing a Backdoor Roth Conversion and performing tax-loss harvesting. Actual numbers depend on individual circumstances.

However, please note that the 401(k) contributions mentioned above refer only to employee limits. In 2025, the limit on contributions (both employee and employer) is $70,000, which goes up to $72,000 in 2026.

It’s equally important that business owners set up their discretionary plans, such as Solo 401(k)s and profit-sharing plans, by December 31st. In many cases, you may fund these plans later — up to your tax filing deadline, including extensions — but the plan itself must exist this year. Model the numbers now, sign on time and your 2025 tax bill drops. As a side benefit, lenders prefer compensation patterns and retirement plan funding that appear deliberate rather than reactive.

Next, you must coordinate capital gains, losses and equity compensation. And if you sold equity, harvested your portfolio or expect to exercise your stock options, this year, Q4, is your last chance to control which year gets the income. Perhaps the most well-known strategy is harvesting losses to offset gains realized in the year. Just be aware that if you repurchase the “same” security within 30 days, your deduction will be prohibited.

For founders and executives, Q4 is your last chance to decide whether to exercise non-qualified stock options (NSO) this year without pushing yourself into a higher bracket. Run an Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) check before exercising incentive stock options (ISO) to see whether doing so would trigger AMT.

Charitable giving is part of this effort, too. If philanthropy is part of your plan, Q4 is how you maximize its impact. Never donate cash if you have appreciated stock held more than one year. By donating appreciated stock directly, you deduct the full fair market value and permanently avoid capital gains tax. If you plan to “bunch” deductions, a Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) is the ideal tool. Contribute a large amount in Q4, take the deduction this year, and direct grants to charities over the coming years.

Finally, use Q4 to ensure your books are clean and ready for year-end tax estimates. This is one of your last opportunities to avoid surprises and understand your tax liability accurately. If you wait until March to reconcile, you’re guessing. In December, you still have time to make data-driven tax moves instead of shooting in the dark. Good books don’t just make filing easier — they enable better planning because your strategy is based on reality.

Related: 4 Tax Strategies Every High-Earning Entrepreneur Needs to Know for 2025

Filing season won’t fix what you missed

The most common tax regret I hear isn’t about a specific number — it’s about lack of proactiveness. It’s the sinking feeling people get in March when they realize they assumed they had more time than they did.

At filing time, your CPA is a historian, not a time traveler. In many cases, no matter how much they want to help, they can’t apply tax-saving strategies retroactively in April for the previous year (with a few exceptions).

While some actions can be taken after year-end — like late S-Corp elections (when applicable), employer-side retirement contributions and certain IRA contributions — many strategies are permanently closed once the calendar turns. You cannot adopt a retirement plan you never established. You cannot execute a charitable transfer you didn’t make. You cannot harvest losses after the market closes on December 31st.

Those doors are locked.

The myth is that you can “optimize at filing.”
The truth is that you optimize in Q4, then file what happened.

Your next tax year starts now

The fastest way to improve your 2026 outcome is to treat these last weeks of 2025 as the start of a new playbook, not the end of an old one. Q4 is the best time to clean up your books, review your compensation and course-correct based on the year that just happened.

Schedule a mandatory tax strategy session with your tax advisor. Review your actual year-to-date revenue and margins. Decide whether to accelerate or defer income (if possible). Finalize payroll and owner distributions. If you run a practice, use this period to confirm that your entity and compensation structures still make sense after a year of growth, hiring, or operational changes.

The message is simple: Treat taxes as a year-round system, not an April fire drill, and you’ll spend less while staying in control.

April is when you report. December is when you decide.

Use Q4 to sequence the right moves, and you’ll keep more, document better and enter the new year with a plan instead of a pile of receipts.

Most people think “tax season” starts in January and ends on April 15th (or October 15th if you’re waiting for those K-1s). But that’s filing season. It’s simply the administrative deadline for reporting what has already happened.

For founders, high-earning professionals and practice owners, the real tax season — and the only window where decisions still move real dollars — is Q4, October through December.

Costco is crushing records this holiday season, driven in part by blockbuster pizza sales that helped beat quarterly expectations.

The warehouse club said its U.S. food courts set a monster Halloween record by selling 358,000 whole pizzas, and shoppers bought roughly 4.5 million pies in the three days before Thanksgiving. Black Friday was also a prime day for pies. The retailer posted $250 million in online orders.

The strong food sales have helped Costco beat estimates for both revenue and profit, even as investors mull other pressures on the business.

Read more

Costco is crushing records this holiday season, driven in part by blockbuster pizza sales that helped beat quarterly expectations.

The warehouse club said its U.S. food courts set a monster Halloween record by selling 358,000 whole pizzas, and shoppers bought roughly 4.5 million pies in the three days before Thanksgiving. Black Friday was also a prime day for pies. The retailer posted $250 million in online orders.

The strong food sales have helped Costco beat estimates for both revenue and profit, even as investors mull other pressures on the business.

Read more

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 81, lost $25 billion of his fortune in a single day, marking one of the largest single-day wealth declines of the year.

The drop, which occurred on Thursday, came after Oracle’s stock fell roughly 11% to 13% after its latest earnings report spooked investors with heavy AI spending.

Oracle reported fiscal second-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday that showed strong 14% year-over-year revenue growth, but still fell short of Wall Street revenue expectations. The company disclosed a large increase in capital expenditures that was well above analyst forecasts, spending about $12 billion during the quarter on AI data centers, higher than the $8.3 billion Wall Street predicted.

The combination of weaker revenue and higher-than-expected AI spending led to the drop in Oracle’s share price, erasing $80 billion in market value on Thursday. Investors wanted to see Oracle turn AI spending into revenue quickly, per Bloomberg.

Related: Someone Just Dethroned Elon Musk as the World’s Richest Person—And It May Not Be Who You Think

Because Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, that share-price decline on Thursday translated directly into one of the largest one-day wealth losses ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Index estimated that it dropped Ellison’s net worth to around $258 billion, pushing him from second place to third place among the world’s richest people. Elon Musk and Larry Page are now the two richest people in the world, with net worths of $462 billion and $268 billion, respectively.

Ellison was briefly the world’s richest person in September following a strong Oracle earnings report that drove the company’s stock price up. Even after the plunge, Ellison remains wealthier than most tech peers, including Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of $253 billion according to the Index, and Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth $231 billion.

Other tech billionaires have faced similar or worse losses. In April, Zuckerberg lost about $24 billion of his net worth, while Musk lost $35 billion in three days, per Business Insider.

Related: Elon Musk Says Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos Are the ‘Smartest’

If Oracle’s AI bets begin to pay off faster and its stock recovers, Ellison’s net worth could rebound quickly. However, continued concerns about AI spending could keep pressure on both the shares and his fortune.

Ellison founded Oracle in 1977 and served as CEO until 2014 before stepping into the chief technology officer role. Since ChatGPT’s debut in November 2022, Oracle has experienced significant growth among business customers that are eager to use the company’s cloud computing services.

On Friday, the drop in Oracle stock continued, with shares down about 3.8% at the time of writing. The stock was down about 14.5% over the past month. Oracle is the 17th-most-valuable company in the world.

Ready to explore everything on Entrepreneur.com? December is your free pass to Entrepreneur+. Enjoy complete access, no strings attached. Claim your free month.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 81, lost $25 billion of his fortune in a single day, marking one of the largest single-day wealth declines of the year.

The drop, which occurred on Thursday, came after Oracle’s stock fell roughly 11% to 13% after its latest earnings report spooked investors with heavy AI spending.

Whether you’re just starting out in business or starting to offer new services or products, having a beautiful and functional website is a must. But when you’re juggling things like product development and finding new customers, you likely have little time for figuring out how to build a website for your business, or the budget to pay someone else to do it.

There are a ton of website builders on the market that promise to make web development fast and simple. One of them is Squarespace—an all-in-one platform to help websites stand out online. Its tools help you build a website; sell products and services; build your brand through social, email, and SEO applications; and provides access to a host of third-party services to manage your business.

Now, with the launch of the Squarespace Blueprint AI Builder, creating a beautiful, custom website has never been easier. A part of Design Intelligence—Squarespace’s overall design system of technological tools for creating websites—the Squarespace Blueprint AI Builder is designed to help users create personalized and unique websites tailored to their specific needs.

Jumpstart your design process

Even without prior web experience, Blueprint AI Builder will guide you, step-by-step, through the design and functionality of your custom site with professional layouts, colors, and font options—all sourced from customer data and online trends, mixing modern and traditional design styles.

Throughout each step, Squarespace provides clear design direction, helping you feel confident about every decision made. And it’s flexible; you can make changes to content and styling anytime you like, even after the site is published.

While many AI-powered web design tools tend to feel generic and unintuitive, the Blueprint AI Builder provides high-quality, curated web content, setting it apart from other AI website builders. Like all Squarespace websites, sites built with the Blueprint AI Builder are SEO-optimized and mobile-ready, fully responsive for any device.

How to get started

Using Blueprint AI Builder is simple and allows you to create a custom website within minutes, not days or weeks.

• First, answer a few questions about your business and brand.

• Next, the Blueprint AI Builder generates high quality, personalized image, copy, and design suggestions based on your answers. With 1.4 billion design combinations, the Blueprint AI Builder finds the right one for you, fast.

• Then preview and refine your design selections in real time.

• Once you’ve made your edits and changes, the Blueprint AI Builder transforms your final choices into a beautiful, customized website.

Go straight to a template to publish your site even faster

Some people need the guidance and control of building a site from scratch with the Blueprint AI Builder. Others may see a template and immediately know it’ll work for their website.

If you have an idea of the type of website you want, you can pick a select from Squarespace’s library of Blueprint AI templates— premade, flexible website templates with curated, embedded content that adapt to your industry and goals.

With Blueprint AI templates, simply use drag-and-drop editing tools and AI-powered guidance in the website editor to perfect your copy, styling, and more. In just a few clicks, you’ll be able to preview the site you’ve created. Once you’re satisfied, hit “publish” to launch your website. It’s that easy.

Anyone with a Squarespace subscription can use the Blueprint AI Builder and Blueprint AI templates at no additional cost. Right now, both are available only on desktop.

Ready to jumpstart your website design? Click here and use promo code ENTREPRENEUR10 for 10% off new paid plans.

Whether you’re just starting out in business or starting to offer new services or products, having a beautiful and functional website is a must. But when you’re juggling things like product development and finding new customers, you likely have little time for figuring out how to build a website for your business, or the budget to pay someone else to do it.

There are a ton of website builders on the market that promise to make web development fast and simple. One of them is Squarespace—an all-in-one platform to help websites stand out online. Its tools help you build a website; sell products and services; build your brand through social, email, and SEO applications; and provides access to a host of third-party services to manage your business.

Now, with the launch of the Squarespace Blueprint AI Builder, creating a beautiful, custom website has never been easier. A part of Design Intelligence—Squarespace’s overall design system of technological tools for creating websites—the Squarespace Blueprint AI Builder is designed to help users create personalized and unique websites tailored to their specific needs.

AI has quickly become the ultimate game-changer in business. Companies and individuals alike are leveraging generative AI to streamline writing, automate workflows, manage content and organize daily tasks. Its reach spans nearly every industry and role, fundamentally reshaping how work gets done.

Whether AI is already changing your day-to-day or you anticipate its influence soon, the only surefire way to fall behind is to do nothing.

You’ve probably heard fearmongering, cautious optimism and plenty of advice from people unsure of where to start. While there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to fully secure your role or maximize AI’s potential, there are concrete steps you can take today to prepare.

Here are three practical strategies to stay ahead:

1. Focus on your industry and your role

AI is often discussed as either a solution to all problems or a threat to every job. Extreme stories — like layoffs at tech companies or solopreneurs 10x-ing their reach with AI — grab attention, but they aren’t representative.

To cut through the noise, research how AI is already being used in your specific role and industry. Focus on:

• Your daily tasks
• Ongoing projects
• The unique value you bring to your business

Then explore how AI can simplify or enhance these areas. Being aware of industry trends — AI and otherwise — ensures you’re prepared to adapt without getting distracted by hype.

2. Develop people-centric skills

The value of soft skills has never been more critical. While coding and technical skills can become automated, human skills remain irreplaceable. Communication, problem-solving, teamwork and adaptability are all areas where humans continue to excel.

Invest in building trust, credibility and influence. People who excel at collaboration and critical thinking are naturally more adaptable in rapidly changing environments. In short, the more you operate in the business of people, the more resilient your career becomes.

Related: What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Here Are Its Benefits, Uses and More

3. Build your personal brand and explore alternative income streams

Keeping up with AI requires thinking beyond your current role or company. Your personal brand — your reputation, skills and experience — travels with you, offering security in a world where roles can shift quickly.

At the same time, consider side projects or part-time ventures in the gig economy. Many AI-driven opportunities are reshaping what’s possible outside traditional work. A hobby, passion project or freelance work could turn into a revenue stream, providing both experience and a safety net.

Related: Is AI Overshadowing Your Own Intelligence? Here’s the Shift You Need to Make.

The takeaway

There’s no guaranteed way to protect yourself completely from AI-driven change. But by focusing on your role and industry, strengthening people-centric skills and building a versatile personal brand, you can position yourself to adapt, thrive and even harness AI to your advantage.

The best approach is proactive preparation — start today, and you’ll give yourself the flexibility and resilience to succeed in an AI-driven future.

AI has quickly become the ultimate game-changer in business. Companies and individuals alike are leveraging generative AI to streamline writing, automate workflows, manage content and organize daily tasks. Its reach spans nearly every industry and role, fundamentally reshaping how work gets done.

Whether AI is already changing your day-to-day or you anticipate its influence soon, the only surefire way to fall behind is to do nothing.

When Think and Grow Rich was published in 1937, it became more than a bestseller — it became the operating manual for American ambition. Napoleon Hill distilled the mechanics of achievement into a formula that entrepreneurs still quote nearly a century later.

But buried in the book’s final chapter was something most readers skipped over: a warning.

Hill called it the sixth sense — a higher dimension of intelligence beyond desire, visualization and persistence. He hinted that success built on mental force without inner coherence could turn destructive. A mind powerful enough to manifest greatness, he suggested, could just as easily collapse in on itself.

Nearly 100 years later, his warning reads less like mysticism and more like a diagnosis of the modern entrepreneurial psyche.

The cost of success we don’t talk about

Entrepreneurs today live in a world that has industrialized Hill’s system. Hustle culture. Optimization. Personal branding. Infinite scale. An entire economy now runs on the belief that more effort equals more evolution.

But behind the highlight reels, many founders face a different reality. 49% of entrepreneurs reported having at least one lifetime mental‑health condition compared to 32% among comparison non‑entrepreneurs. Burnout is common and often unnoticed until it reaches a crisis point. Cognitive overload — the constant mental juggling of strategy, operations and people — can erode decision quality, a founder’s most valuable skill.

Even icons acknowledge it. Musk, Jobs, Bezos — all have spoken publicly about the personal costs of building transformative companies. We’ve mistaken motion for growth and ambition for evolution. Hill’s work was never a worship of hustle; it was an invitation to awaken a deeper intelligence. We mastered his tactics but ignored his frequency. We gained productivity and lost presence.

When achievement becomes identity, success turns hollow. The same drive that builds empires can quietly consume the person building them. Externally, the world is thriving. Internally, many entrepreneurs are bankrupting themselves.

Related: 5 Entrepreneurial Mindsets That Drive Success

The blind spot in 20th-century success psychology

Hill felt there was more to achievement than mindset, but lacked the scientific language to articulate it. He described “vibration,” “subconscious power” and the “sixth sense” like a physics he could feel but not yet measure.

He wasn’t alone. Breakthrough thinkers throughout history brushed against the limits of raw intelligence:

• Early AI pioneers warned that intelligence without consciousness magnifies human flaws.
• Einstein regretted that his equation paved the way for destruction.
• Tesla dreamed of free energy — and died penniless while his discoveries were weaponized.
• Even Musk warns that unchecked intelligence, human or artificial, could threaten humanity.

The pattern is consistent: capability without coherence leads to collapse. Hill glimpsed this truth. What he couldn’t articulate is what we can now describe: awareness that determines whether success elevates us or erodes us.

Related: Being ‘Busy’ Isn’t Helping You Be Productive — 5 Tips to Become Truly Efficient at Work

The real revolution in entrepreneurship

Hill’s legacy wasn’t ambition. It was awareness. He left a set of clues for a generation with the tools to decode them — and that generation is us.

The next era of entrepreneurship won’t be led by the people who work the hardest or think the fastest. It will be led by those who operate with coherence — leaders who master energy as well as strategy.

These are the founders who can:

• Scale impact without fracturing themselves
• Innovate without self-sacrifice
• Build wealth that sustains instead of depletes
• Create organizations that restore rather than extract

Because the future won’t belong to the busiest minds. It will belong to the most coherent ones.

Perhaps the next revolution in business isn’t about creating more wealth. It’s about learning how to hold it — without losing ourselves.

When Think and Grow Rich was published in 1937, it became more than a bestseller — it became the operating manual for American ambition. Napoleon Hill distilled the mechanics of achievement into a formula that entrepreneurs still quote nearly a century later.

But buried in the book’s final chapter was something most readers skipped over: a warning.

I tested the first AI agents as we were building them. And what fascinated me the most was watching these systems reason through test scenarios that I hadn’t even thought of.

We’re still experimenting with these QA agents under different conditions, but software QA, in my eyes, has changed forever.

We’re watching AI agents write comprehensive test suites in hours instead of weeks, finding obscure bugs that would have taken months to surface and adapting their strategies based on what they learn about your codebase. And I think every company should test the waters before it’s too late.

Related: How Autonomous Agents Are Transforming Software From Passive to Powerful

What is agentic testing doing that traditional approaches can’t?

Writing, executing and evolving tests autonomously by reasoning about software behavior.

Agentic testing deploys AI systems that generate test cases, execute them and rewrite their strategies when they discover gaps. These agents understand patterns in how software breaks. They identify edge cases nobody specified because they’re analyzing code structure, user behavior patterns and historical defect data simultaneously.

Traditional automated testing runs predetermined scripts faster. But agentic testing reasons about what needs testing and adapts its approach based on discoveries. Your release velocity is probably constrained by verification coverage. Agents remove that constraint by generating tests as fast as developers write code.

Why should I care about this right now?

Fifty-one percent of companies have deployed AI agents, and 62% expect ROI above 100%. By 2027, 86% of companies will have agents operational.

In fact, companies outside the U.S. are seeing wider adoption. According to the same data, U.K. companies lead deployment at 66%, Australia at 60% and U.S. at 48%.

Software complexity grows exponentially while testing capacity grows linearly. That fundamental mismatch creates an expanding gap between what needs verification and what your team can realistically cover. Either you expand QA teams indefinitely or you change the economics of how verification happens.

What returns are companies actually seeing?

The average expected ROI is 171%, with U.S. companies expecting 192%.

Those numbers reflect measured outcomes rather than aspirational goals. Generative AI already delivered 152% average returns, with 62% of companies exceeding 100% ROI. Agentic AI builds on that foundation by adding autonomous decision-making capabilities.

Gartner predicts 80% of customer service issues will be autonomously resolved by 2029, cutting operational costs by 30%. Testing follows similar trajectories. Each production incident carries direct costs like downtime and remediation, plus indirect costs like customer trust erosion. Calculate what preventing two major incidents per quarter is worth to your business, then work backward to implementation costs.

How do I know if this applies to my business?

Three diagnostic questions determine readiness: Is verification your bottleneck? Can you commit 12 weeks? Do you measure quality now?

Manual testing delays deployments in every growing software business. If verification limits ship frequency, agentic testing addresses the structural constraint. If upstream bottlenecks exist, solve those first.

Implementation demands focus. 41% cite lack of planning as their top GenAI mistake. Another 36% didn’t define ROI expectations clearly. Time and planning separate successful deployments from abandoned pilots.

Without baseline metrics, proving ROI becomes impossible. If you don’t track current coverage, defect rates and time-to-detection, install measurement infrastructure first. Most organizations track deploys but not quality indicators. Fix that gap before deploying autonomous verification systems.

Related: AI Agents: Essential Strategies for Hustling Entrepreneurs and Small Tech Businesses

What does implementation actually look like?

Start with one contained domain, measure rigorously for 12 weeks, and scale based on validated results.

Weeks 1-4: Pick one high-friction domain where logic is understood, but manual effort constrains velocity. API testing, regression maintenance or data validation provides clear metrics without exposing production systems. Define measurable outcomes before deployment: coverage percentage, defect detection rate, time from commit to completion and false positive rate.

Weeks 5-8: Connect agents to test environments while preparing training data. This phase always exceeds vendor timelines. Your systems have undocumented quirks. Agents need historical data, defect patterns and architecture documentation to learn effective strategies. Install behavioral logging, performance tracking, quality metrics and security monitoring before running initial tests.

Weeks 9-12: Run agents parallel to existing processes. Don’t replace the current verification immediately. Compare which tests agents generate that existing approaches missed, which bugs they catch earlier and what false positives they produce. This validation phase determines scale or scrap decisions. Over 40% of projects will be canceled by 2027 due to unclear value or insufficient controls.

What kills these implementation projects?

Treating agents like traditional automation, poor data quality, over-scoping and weak security architecture.

Agents are designed to learn and adapt continuously, producing unexpected behaviors. You need to monitor decisions and reasoning, while also testing outputs. When an agent explores functionality differently, distinguish genuine innovation from problematic drift.

Poor data quality produces unreliable tests. If historical test data contains inconsistencies, agents learn ineffective patterns. Data cleanup requires weeks, not days. Most organizations underestimate preparation work and deploy prematurely. The Next Generation of AI report states that 52% of companies expect to automate 26% to 50% of workloads, averaging 36% automation. That’s the realistic target. Any higher and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

Autonomous agents with broad system access create security exposure. The same report finds 45% of organizations cite security vulnerabilities and 43% cite AI-targeted attacks as top implementation concerns. Implement segmented access, continuous behavior monitoring and immediate shutdown capabilities.

Related: 5 Ways AI Is Solving the Biggest Bottleneck for Engineering Teams Today

What’s next for AI agentic testing?

Allocate pilot budget if diagnostics pass, fix measurement infrastructure if they don’t, or solve upstream constraints first.

If manual verification bottlenecks releases and you can commit 12 focused weeks, allocate implementation budget now. Seventy-five percent of companies spend $1 million or more on AI initiatives. If you can’t answer fundamental questions about current coverage or defect rates, install measurement systems first.

My take is, the technology definitely works. It’s always the implementation and expectations that either help you reach your goals or lead to disappointments. Your job as a leader is to set conservative expectations and allow time for workflow changes. That’s going to be the biggest hurdle to the implementation of agentic AI testing.

I tested the first AI agents as we were building them. And what fascinated me the most was watching these systems reason through test scenarios that I hadn’t even thought of.

We’re still experimenting with these QA agents under different conditions, but software QA, in my eyes, has changed forever.

Your business is already becoming an AI company even if you haven’t planned for it yet. Across industries, teams are quietly adopting AI tools to write content, generate insights, automate tasks and make decisions faster than ever. Marketing teams are using AI to produce campaigns in minutes. Sales teams are analyzing pipelines with personalized AI copilots. Developers are building features with AI-first workflows.

This shift isn’t waiting for leadership approval. It’s happening from the ground up, and it’s accelerating. AI is no longer a technology conversation. It’s a business transformation conversation. And companies that wait for a perfect strategy will lose out to those that learn fast and move faster.

AI isn’t the next chapter of digital transformation. It’s the operating system of the modern company.

Related: Why Entrepreneurs Need to Adapt and Utilize the Power of AI Right Now

The real shift: From tools to intelligence

Most companies think that becoming an AI company means adopting the right AI model or platform. But the real shift is deeper. AI isn’t just software; it’s intelligence woven into every workflow, every role, every decision.

When we look at the companies succeeding with AI today, the pattern is clear:

Step 1: Start with outcomes, not algorithms

Leaders don’t ask, “What AI tools should we buy?” They ask, “Which business outcomes matter most this quarter?” Faster sales cycles, lower operating costs, better customer experiences and higher employee productivity. Build AI around these outcomes, not around technology hype.

Step 2: Empower every employee, not just technical teams

AI is becoming the universal skillset, just like email or the internet was. The companies winning today are the ones investing in AI literacy across marketing, finance, operations, HR and field teams.

Step 3: Create a culture that rewards AI experimentation

AI rewards speed. Companies need structures that encourage testing, learning and rapid adaptation, not long approval cycles. AI isn’t replacing teams, it’s elevating them. Companies that adopt this mindset see AI not as a threat to jobs, but as a multiplier of human creativity and operational excellence.

A practical framework: The STEP method

Let me introduce the STEP Framework, a simple model any organization can use to scale AI quickly and responsibly:

1. Self: Build personal AI fluency within your employees

AI transformation begins with individuals. Every leader needs a hands-on understanding of how AI accelerates their work. Not theory, practice. The companies that move fastest are the ones where executives actively use AI daily.

2. Team: Equip every department with AI workflows

The next layer is team-level transformation. Marketing, sales, finance, HR, support; each function needs tailored AI use cases and guardrails. This is where AI shifts from experimentation to measurable impact.

3. Enterprise: Align AI with strategy, governance and data

Enterprise AI is about scale, not just tools. This is where governance, privacy, security and data readiness matter. Companies must define how AI decisions are logged, validated, monitored and improved. Modern AI requires enterprises to treat data as fuel.

4. Productivity: Make AI the default mode of work

This is where AI moves from pilots to business results. AI becomes embedded in daily workflows like autonomous agents that handle routine tasks, copilots that support deep analysis, intelligent automation that reduces friction and insights delivered to every employee in natural language. This is when AI becomes the operating system of the company.

Related: AI Is Creating New Winners and Losers. Here’s How Smart Leaders Are Restructuring to Get Ahead.

Why this matters now

Every major industry is on the edge of an AI inflection point. But the real competitive advantage isn’t simply using AI. It’s using AI with intention, discipline and speed. Companies that succeed with AI are not the ones spending the most money on models. They’re the ones that understand that data is the foundation of every AI outcome. AI is no longer optional. It’s inevitable.

The next generation of market leaders will be the companies that move from AI pilots to AI workflows and from AI workflows to AI strategy. This is the real shift to becoming an AI company. AI will not replace leaders. But leaders who use AI will replace those who don’t.

Your business is already becoming an AI company even if you haven’t planned for it yet. Across industries, teams are quietly adopting AI tools to write content, generate insights, automate tasks and make decisions faster than ever. Marketing teams are using AI to produce campaigns in minutes. Sales teams are analyzing pipelines with personalized AI copilots. Developers are building features with AI-first workflows.

This shift isn’t waiting for leadership approval. It’s happening from the ground up, and it’s accelerating. AI is no longer a technology conversation. It’s a business transformation conversation. And companies that wait for a perfect strategy will lose out to those that learn fast and move faster.

Did you make a purchase on the Google Play Store between August 16, 2016, and September 30, 2023? Millions of Google Play users may receive automatic payments from a $700 million settlement with Google if they made app or in-app purchases over the seven-year period.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced on Wednesday that he and 52 other attorneys general reached a $700 million settlement with Google over claims that its Play Store practices were anticompetitive. They argued that Google tightly controlled how users could obtain and pay for apps, while misleading consumers about the risks of downloading apps from outside the Play Store. They allege that consumers paid too much for apps and in-app purchases because Google monopolized app distribution on Android devices.

Google denies any wrongdoing and said in a 2023 statement about the case that the company remains “committed to continually improving Android and Google Play.”

Related: Anthropic Proposes $1.5 Billion Settlement Over ‘Stealing’ Books, the Largest Copyright Payout Ever

“This case was never just about app purchases — it was about what happens when a company quietly controls the choices and prices that millions of people rely on every day,” said Rayfield in a statement. “That kind of power affects households in [a] real way. This settlement begins to unwind that. This work is about giving families and small businesses a voice, and making sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Starting last week, on December 2, consumers who made purchases on the Google Play Store began receiving notices about how the settlement funds would be distributed, per Rayfield’s press release.

Most customers will not need to file a claim to receive their share of the settlement. Instead, they will receive an automatic payment through PayPal or Venmo using the email address or phone number linked to their Google Play account. The settlement still has to be approved by the court on April 30, 2026, before these automatic payments are processed, according to the press release.

There will be a supplemental claims process for customers who do not have an existing PayPal or Venmo account or no longer have access to the email or phone number tied to their Google Play account after the automatic payments process is complete.

Related: Apple Says It Settled a Lawsuit for $95 Million that Accuses Siri of Eavesdropping

Affected customers can sign up to be notified when the supplemental claims process begins on the settlement website.

Approximately 133.4 million individuals in the U.S. own an Android phone as of 2022, according to eMarketer. Samsung, Motorola and Google are some of the top Android phone brands. As of last month, Apple held 59% of the market share for smartphones in the U.S., while Samsung took 22% and Motorola had 4%, according to StatCounter.

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Did you make a purchase on the Google Play Store between August 16, 2016, and September 30, 2023? Millions of Google Play users may receive automatic payments from a $700 million settlement with Google if they made app or in-app purchases over the seven-year period.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced on Wednesday that he and 52 other attorneys general reached a $700 million settlement with Google over claims that its Play Store practices were anticompetitive. They argued that Google tightly controlled how users could obtain and pay for apps, while misleading consumers about the risks of downloading apps from outside the Play Store. They allege that consumers paid too much for apps and in-app purchases because Google monopolized app distribution on Android devices.

Startups that don’t learn how to scale viable ideas often fail.

If you’ve ever built a startup from scratch, you know the story. You start with a clear pain point, build a product that solves it, and fight to get valuable clients.

In that moment, it feels like you’ve cracked it, and momentum will never stop.

Yet 42% startups collapse due to misreading market demand. And when growth stalls, everything comes crashing down. Sales slow, your pipeline dries up and your product gets more complex, but revenue doesn’t follow.

When Airbnb hit the same wall, stopping was not an option. So, what did they do? The founders grabbed a camera, flew to New York and began taking professional photos of listings by themselves.

I always return to this story when speaking with ambitious founders. There’s only a hairline difference between building a product and knowing how to scale one. Let’s discuss the major drawbacks that stop startups from scaling, and the strategic approaches that help you stay resilient.

1. A broken go-to-market process

When founders treat “launching” as success, their learning curve becomes a straight line.

They obsess over features and perfection — but traction matters most. An unassailable go-to-market validates that your product solves a problem people will pay for. Most startups spend months on dashboards, integrations and AI add-ons even before acknowledging customers’ views about the core feature. This isn’t progress; it’s expensive guesswork.

Your MVP is a test, not a product. It can be a simple wireframe, prototype or flowchart. In startups, the primary principle is to prove value quickly or risk losing customers before they experience your differentiation.

The smartest founders bring in agile partners who can flexibly meet their needs, prototype quickly and translate ideas into working solutions without locking the company into heavy overhead. This flexibility enables speed, clarity and breathing room to iterate based on real-time feedback.

So, before you scale, simplify, test your assumptions, build lean and validate fast.

2. Unbalanced teams

Many startups focus on developers and designers but overlook those who sell the product, resulting in a powerful platform with unpredictable revenue. It’s typical to see founders drive the first handful of deals, only for growth to plateau later because no repeatable sales motion exists beyond their own effort.

You can’t scale on code alone. Scaling comes from balance — a team that can build, sell and support in sync. When those pieces don’t move together, growth stalls and customer insight gets lost in the noise.

Your tech might give you a great product, but it’s your sales and customer success teams that turn that product into a business.

Build balance from the start. Even if hiring involves one salesperson and a customer success lead, it is important to hire for both product and revenue functions early.

Encourage partnerships between engineering, sales and support. This enables product evolution guided by market reality, rather than internal assumptions.

Related: Why Your Mindset Can Be Your Most Powerful Startup Strategy — and How to Develop It

3. Founder-led sales that never end

Founder-led sales are often one of the biggest barriers to early-stage companies. Initially, it’s understandable — the founder knows the market, the problem and the product narrative better than anyone else.

However, as the company scales, this pattern becomes a hindrance rather than an edge. Now, when every sale still depends on the founder, scalability crashes.

This prevents the organization from creating a predictable and repeatable sales motion, and strategic growth takes a backseat.

Did you know that HubSpot faced this, too? Its founders closed the earliest deals, but real growth only came once their instincts converted into repeatable sales playbooks and processes that their team could run.

High-growth, visionary startups make this shift early by operationalizing the founder’s insights. They turn instinct into playbooks, relationships into processes and ad-hoc selling into structured enablement.

Start building your sales infrastructure the moment you find product–market fit. Document your sales process, define your ICP and invest in a repeatable playbook. Empower your team to sell and trust them with the narrative.

4. Building fiefdoms, not flexibility

As startups grow, it’s common for teams to form silos. Engineering guards the product, sales guards the customer and operations guards the process. But this is where innovation slows down.

Now, instead of collaborating, teams start protecting territory. Product decisions take longer. Priorities drift. Suddenly, the agility that once defined you early on disappears under layers of internal friction.

As the market needs shift, your team needs to evolve with them. Build a culture of shared ownership. Cross-functional pods work better than rigid hierarchies in early-stage startups.

Rotate responsibilities, encourage open product feedback from every department and reward collaboration over control. The more flexible your teams are, the faster your company can learn and scale.

Related: I Run a Portfolio of High-Growth Companies — This Practice Makes It All Possible

5. Neglecting support and customer success

Without consistent sales support, growth becomes a revolving door.

In every sector, clients aren’t just buying software; they’re betting their operations, outcomes and often investors on your reliability. When onboarding is weak or support is slow, even the best technology loses credibility. Customer success is the backbone of retention and referral growth.

Invest early in customer success. Establish onboarding processes that coach users, initiate feedback loops informing your roadmap and track retention with the same rigor as acquisition. A loyal customer base can be the most cost-effective growth strategy, and a powerful proof that your product works.

Startups that don’t learn how to scale viable ideas often fail.

If you’ve ever built a startup from scratch, you know the story. You start with a clear pain point, build a product that solves it, and fight to get valuable clients.