A top entrepreneur says these 3 steps will separate the winners from the wiped-out in the age of AI

• Daniel Priestley says AI will split the economy into “haves and have-nots” by 2027.
• The bestselling author urges founders to rebuild now or risk going “out of business” by 2032.
• Priestley warns this is “not the time to rest” — companies must paddle or be swept away.

The next five years will decide whether your business surfs the AI wave — or gets swallowed by it.

That’s the warning from Daniel Priestley, a bestselling author and founder of the business accelerator Dent Global.

In a podcast interview on Tuesday, he described AI as a rapidly evolving technological shift that he says will split the economy into “haves and have-nots” by 2027. By the early 2030s, Priestley said, companies that haven’t adapted will be “out of business.”

“If a tsunami was about to hit the shore, you don’t have time off. You move your family out of the way,” he told podcaster James Smith on “The Problem With…” podcast.

“This is not the time to rest. This is the time to paddle,” he added.

Here are the three steps Priestley said will determine which side you end up on.

1. Assume your business is already dead — and rebuild it

At Priestley’s company retreats, founders start with a grim premise: your business has already been wiped out.

“We love saying our business is dead. We need to reinvent the business,” he said. “We play the game and we say, ‘How did the business die?'”

The usual answer, he said, is that it was replaced by a faster, AI-powered rival that delivered value instantly and told a better story.

That realization becomes the basis for a new plan.

“We said, ‘OK, we’ve got to become that company — that company that disrupted us and killed our business that we have today. That’s our job now.”

Priestley calls it the “Your business is dead” workshop — a thought experiment designed to jolt founders out of complacency and force them to build AI into their core before someone else does.

“Every day that you wait is going to be a day of catch-up that you have to do,” he said. “How are you going to reinvent it?”

2. Treat AI like free labor — and build around it

Priestley calls this mindset “Atlantis has risen,” a metaphor that captures how AI fundamentally expands human capacity.

He asks the founders to imagine discovering a new continent — Atlantis — home to a billion people with master’s degrees and Ph.Ds, all willing to work for free.

“They’re super smart, but they just don’t know a lot about like what you want them to do. They’re all willing to work for free. And we call these agents.”

To him, AI represents a limitless digital workforce — brilliant, tireless, and costless — ready to perform complex research, generate ideas, and execute tasks at scale.

“If you could access unlimited free labor, these remote workers, what would you do?” he asked.

3. Build a 30-person AI staff

In Priestley’s world, scale no longer means size.

He said the companies that win the AI era will be lean, agile, and tightly focused — small teams that move at machine speed.

His “2-4-8-30 rule” breaks that down:

• 2-person scout team to test new ideas.
• 4-person fire-starting team to launch products.
• 8-person core team to sustain seven-figure revenue.
• 30-person scale-up team to go global.

“With 30 people, you can do an enormous amount,” he said. “You can do what 300 people used to do now that AI is here.”

He believes this structure reflects the new reality — AI has eliminated the need for vast hierarchies and bloated headcounts. What matters now is speed, creativity, and the ability to integrate technology directly into decision-making.

The bottom line

Priestley’s message is blunt: this is a five-year sprint, not a marathon.

“For the first 5 years, it’s kind of a toy. You ignore it, and then it becomes more serious,” he said, “and then it jumps the chasm and it becomes embedded in everything.”

He believes we’re halfway through that window — and after 2027, the divide between AI users and laggards will be irreversible.

“This is not the time to rest,” he said. “This is the time to paddle like crazy and surf this thing.”

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