"If you've got nonsense coming into a system, you've got nonsense coming out of it, no matter how powerful the system is." Domenico Cipolla runs an ERP that powers 1,800+ companies, and he's putting AI agents inside it - so he has a very grounded view of what enterprise AI actually does.
On The AI Floor, Shamil Malachiyev sits down with Domenico Cipolla, co-CEO of Xentral, the German cloud ERP backed by Sequoia and Tiger Global, for a hype-free look at where AI adoption really is - straight from someone building it into the software that runs other companies' operations.
Before Xentral, Domenico spent 15 to 20 years on the customer side operating and implementing ERPs. In this conversation he explains why AI is "just a means, not a value in itself," why most companies with a grand AI strategy are doing nothing internally, and how his team rebuilt a paid vendor tool over a single weekend once AI entered the picture.
Expect to learn:
- Why "garbage in, garbage out" is the real ceiling on enterprise AI, not the model
- Why everyone has an AI strategy but almost nobody is actually doing anything with it
- How they replaced a paid invoice-reconciliation tool by "vibe coding" a better one in a weekend
- Why an ERP has to stay deterministic - the same process, run 1,000 times, must give the same result
- The simple matrix for deciding where to apply AI first (how manual a task is vs how many customers touch it)
- Why their biggest competitor isn't another vendor - it's Excel and dead legacy code
- The AI agents they're building into the ERP: dunning, invoice reconciliation, reordering, support and returns
- Whether the AI bubble is real - and how a Sequoia-backed CEO stays calm through the noise
If you're leading AI adoption, running operations or finance, or building software into the AI era, this is the from-the-trenches version.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro: cutting through the AI hype
0:54 Domenico's path: 20 years on the ERP customer side
2:24 No grand strategy - and why "AI is just a means"
4:31 "Everyone has an AI strategy. They do nothing." Where to actually start
6:35 Why an ERP has to stay deterministic
7:48 The flagship use case: invoice reconciliation, rebuilt in a weekend
10:56 What SMEs actually want from AI ("no bullshit, what can you deliver?")
13:03 Natural-language reporting: no more SQL
15:45 The hardest part is adoption, not the tech
21:31 The real competitor: Excel and dead legacy code
22:45 Own agents vs third-party agents - and the data layer underneath
26:34 What people get wrong about AI (four things)
30:55 How to evaluate if you're AI-ready: pick one use case and hit the walls
37:38 Is the AI bubble real?
40:00 Bottom-up curiosity: letting teams automate their own work
42:06 Standardize the tools, or let people play?
44:24 The takeaway: filter the noise, don't panic, chart your own way
👇 CONNECT WITH DOMENICO CIPOLLA
Domenico Cipolla ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/domenicocipolla/
Xentral ERP Software ► https://xentral.com
👇 CONNECT WITH SHAMIL
Shamil Malachiyev ►https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamilmalachiyev/
FluidLabs ► https://fluidlabs.com/
🎙 LISTEN to The AI Floor (The Founder's Code, Season 2)
Spotify ► https://open.spotify.com/show/7v6YOQ77R1xzbOiiHsDawd
Apple ► https://podcasts.apple.com/sa/podcast/the-founder-s-code/id1797768317
🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more unfiltered, ground-level conversations with the people building AI inside the world's biggest companies.
ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
The AI Floor (The Founder's Code, Season 2) - honest, ground-level conversations with the people actually building AI inside the world's biggest companies. No hype, just what's real.
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