The AI Battle Between Incumbents and Startups- Matt Paige

https://www.gtmaiacademy.com https://www.aibusinessnetwork.ai https://www.gtmaipodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpaige/

I discovered Matt Paige when he had just 200-300 TikTok followers, and I've been following his AI journey ever since. Now he's VP of Strategy & Marketing at HatchWorks AI, and honestly, this conversation blew my mind with how practical and real his approach is to AI implementation.

This isn't another "AI will change everything" conversation. Matt gets into the nitty-gritty of what's actually working for businesses right now.

On the reality of AI adoption:

"AI is easy to do. But it's hard to do well, right? It's easy for anybody to go talk to ChatGPT, write an email, do this, do that. But to actually build a system within your business, integrate with your business, start leveraging agents, automating things, entire job functions - that's not as easy to do."

On the brutal truth about jobs:

"Sometimes we tell ourselves AI won't take jobs because it sounds safe and nice. I think it is gonna take jobs. But I think it will open and create new things we never thought of before."

On the democratization of building:

"You could build for an audience of one being yourself. And it's okay, because it takes you an hour. This changes this whole shift in how we think about SaaS builders."

The Tools Matt Actually Uses:

• His complete AI development stack (Lovable, Bolt, Cursor)
• Voice agents that handle "bland tasks" with decision trees, not rigid scripts
• Browser automation tools that can literally buy toilet paper on Amazon
• Open source alternatives to expensive AI platforms

Real Implementation Stories:

• How he built a closet-sharing tracker for his wife in 2 days
• Custom ChatGPT doing K-means clustering on Airbnb data for market segmentation
• Why the old data request process (submit ticket, wait a week, get partial answer) is dead

The Battle Between Incumbents and Startups: Matt breaks down why companies like Salesforce are struggling with their AI pivot while new entrants are building AI-native from day one. But here's the kicker - incumbents have massive proprietary data that startups can't touch.

His Final Advice:

"Go start playing with stuff on a daily basis. Habits build over time. Put yourself on the front end of that transformation so you have choices."

Matt isn't selling you on AI dreams - he's showing you the actual tools, the real costs, and the honest challenges. He's in the trenches building this stuff for 200+ person organizations, and he shares what works and what doesn't.

Plus, you'll hear about the Google Agent White Paper breakdown that explains exactly how to build effective AI agents (LLM + Orchestration + Tools), and why most people are thinking about this wrong.

If you're tired of AI hype and want practical, implementable strategies, this conversation delivers.

Listen now and let me know what resonates with you most.

Connect with Matt Paige on LinkedIn or check out HatchWorks AI to see their approach to AI transformation. And if you found value in this episode, please share it with someone who needs to hear Matt's insights on getting AI implementation right.