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

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