Most service businesses drown in the chaos between what customers ask for and what they actually need. Kit Cox has spent over a decade building Enate to solve exactly that, an orchestration platform that helps B2B service providers cut through vagueness, assemble data, and deliver consistently exceptional service powered by both AI and human workforce.

In this episode, Kit breaks down the three stages of service delivery, why culture trumps everything else as a founder, and how radical honesty, not "fake it till you make it" builds the customer relationships that actually last. He also shares why the best hires might have learned their most valuable skills in drama class, and why lawyers and IT departments as we know them might not survive the next decade.

What you'll learn:

🎯 The three critical stages of service delivery and where AI actually makes the difference

💡 Why culture is the single most important thing a founder can build

🤝 How brutal honesty creates stronger customer relationships than polished salesmanship

🧠 The "thousand types of clever" needed to build a company (and why education only tests two of them)

⚡ How to systematise hiring so you're finding values and attitude, not just skills

🔍 Why "what are you most proud of?" reveals more about a candidate than any competency question

Who should listen:

Founder-CEOs scaling B2B service or SaaS businesses, particularly those in the 50-100+ employee range

CTOs and COOs managing complex service delivery operations

Leaders implementing AI and automation in service environments

Anyone trying to move from bespoke chaos to scalable, repeatable customer success

Podcast recommendations:

13 Minutes to the Moon - BBC World Service - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2

Mindscape - Sean Carroll - https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/

About the Guest:

Kit Cox is the founder and CTO of Enate, an orchestration platform helping B2B service providers deliver exceptional services powered by AI and human teams. A manufacturing engineer by training and software engineer by passion, Kit has spent over a decade building Enate through three distinct phases, from bespoke services to a focused product for BPO providers, and now to a full-scale platform supporting service delivery in the age of generative AI.

Under his leadership, Enate has grown to approximately 100 people across the UK and India, achieving 40% year-on-year growth and reaching profitability in 2023. The company secured investment from Scottish Equity Partners in 2023 and now serves some of the world's largest service providers with a laser-focused account-based approach targeting just 100 key companies.

Kit is known for his commitment to culture-first leadership, his belief that successful customer relationships require radical honesty, and his conviction that it takes "a thousand different types of clever" to build a successful company, most of which aren't tested in traditional education. He champions curiosity as a hiring requirement and structures his company to act as one unified team across geographies, with India serving as a profit centre rather than just a cost-reduction play.

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:42 The three lives of the business and early AI pivot  

05:12 Five contrarian truths Kit believes about business and tech  

07:56 Enate’s scale, global team breakdown and revenue growth  

12:10 Why culture is a founder’s most vital responsibility  

14:02 How values are taught, lived and kept alive at Enate  

19:15 Brutal honesty as the foundation of long-term clients  

22:05 How honesty leads to transformation and customer trust  

26:16 Drama skills, sales success and the many types of clever  

30:00 Hiring for values over credentials and traditional education  

33:58 Why lawyers and IT departments are headed for extinction  

37:44 The shift from IT-managed apps to integrated business tech  

39:16 Scaling via customer success and embedded partnerships  

42:36 Sales strategy, ABM focus and long buying cycles  

44:46 Hiring systems, culture fit, and essential interview questions  

49:04 Where Kit learns: podcasts, YouTube and curiosity sources