Justin Massa and Jason Rubinstein are the co-founders of Remix Partners, an AI strategy consultancy that has now run 32+ kickstarts with small and medium-sized businesses across sectors and geographies. Their perspective is grounded in what actually works — not what looks good in a slide deck — and this conversation is full of practical frameworks for PE investors and operators trying to move AI from an experiment into the business.

You'll Learn:

• Why executive engagement is the single non-negotiable success factor in any AI rollout, and what it actually looks like in practice
• The difference between augment and automate — and why 95% of consulting firms stop at automation when the real leverage is in augmentation
• How to use a three-tier deployment framework (Experiment / Pilot / Implement) to prioritize where AI goes next, and why you need to revisit it every quarter
• What "agent-legible" means — restructuring business information so agents can navigate it efficiently — and a simple mental model for where to start
• A detailed manufacturing case study: how a 70-year-old custom parts company cut its RFQ turnaround time nearly in half using a Claude Code workbench built in 3.5 weeks

Chapters: 

00:00 – Intro
00:33 – Welcome & what Justin and Jason hope listeners take away
01:41 – Who are Justin & Jason / Remix Partners origin
03:19 – Jason's background and why they're doing this together
04:36 – Reflecting on the past year: what changed in the market
07:21 – What's driving the shift in appetite for AI
11:50 – Going wide vs. going deep on AI opportunities
12:55 – Data on AI adoption: where companies actually are
14:42 – Why small businesses are now advantaged over enterprise
15:39 – Operationalizing AI: the Remix kickstart approach
18:21 – Executive engagement as the #1 success factor
19:13 – Show and tell culture: banning secret cyborgs
21:33 – How the approach scales from SMBs to Fortune 25
23:56 – The leader's mandate: making time for AI
25:03 – What went wrong with other consultants
26:48 – The augment vs. automate framework
28:07 – Getting from automation to augmentation
30:33 – The jagged frontier and workforce implications
31:55 – How to navigate capabilities without a static view
33:35 – Deployment zones: Experiment / Pilot / Implement
35:29 – How zones shift quarterly / software stack decisions
37:50 – Manufacturing case study: the setup
40:26 – What they built (workbench in Claude Code, RFQ automation)
42:54 – Who was involved across the organization
44:27 – Impact: clock speed and capacity nearly halved
46:00 – Engineers' time reallocation; divorcing revenue from headcount
47:33 – Agent legibility: what it means and why it matters
49:38 – Making your business agent-legible: the practical how
52:54 – This year we edit documents, we don't create them
53:32 – Where to start for a 50-person company
56:16 – Plug into your core work application and play
58:07 – What happens to companies that don't experiment now
59:11 – Playing to Win in an AI era: differentiation AND low cost
01:02:33 – Closing

• Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwMibqytKFA
• Connect with Justin Massa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmassa/
• Connect with Jason Rubinstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-rubinstein-94815/ 
• Explore more interviews: https://checkpluris.com/expert-interviews

Proof of Work is the podcast of Pluris, a platform connecting investors and operators with the world's leading applied AI experts. Each episode features the builders, operators, and investors who've actually put AI into production, turning it from buzzword to bottom line through sharp case studies and practical conversations. We explore how AI is used to grow revenue, expand margins, improve operations, and create measurable value inside real businesses.

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