An entrepreneur in residence who finds the EBITDA in AI, ships the first win in weeks and scales it across the portfolio, inside the hold period.
AI is reshaping your portfolio company's market, whether by threatening its revenue model or by letting competitors cut costs faster. The value-creation plan needs AI results, but the management team is busy running the business and no one inside has built with AI. Every quarter without results shortens the hold period.
PE operating partners and portfolio-company CEOs at companies with $10MM+ in revenue that need AI results within the hold period: new revenue, better margins, or both.
map where AI threatens the business and where it can raise EBITDA, ranked by impact and time to payback
build and ship the first use case in weeks, measured against an agreed EBITDA target
roll it out across the company, then across the portfolio
leave systems and skills the management team owns
Each phase de-risks the next: you never pay to scale something that hasn't already earned it.
For a $50MM company at a 15% margin, adding 3 points of EBITDA margin with AI is $1.5MM more EBITDA, $15MM in exit value at 10×.
A portfolio company that can show AI already working in its operations also sells at a better multiple. Moving from 10× to 12× adds another $18MM. Together that's 44% more exit value from the same company.
These are the use cases that consistently show measurable positive ROI for established companies with $10MM+ in revenue — ranked roughly by how frequently they deliver returns and how quickly they pay back. Your audit maps these against your specific operations.
Based on current data — McKinsey, “The State of AI in 2025” (Nov 2025), mid-market studies, and 2025–2026 ROI reports.
| Rank | Use Case | Typical ROI / Payback | Why it works for $10MM+ companies | How hard to implement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Customer Support / Ticket Deflection | 148–200% ROI, 3–5 month payback | High volume of repetitive questions. AI handles 30–60% of tickets. | Medium |
| 2 | Intelligent Document Processing | 300–400% ROI, 3–6 month payback | Contracts, invoices, forms, RFPs, support emails. Saves large amounts of manual work. | Medium |
| 3 | Software Engineering Productivity | Strong cost reduction + faster shipping | Code generation, test writing, PR reviews, debugging. McKinsey consistently shows this as one of the highest-impact areas. | Low–Medium (for tech companies) |
| 4 | Internal Knowledge Assistants (RAG) | High productivity gains, fast payback | Employees stop hunting for information in Slack, Notion, Confluence, Google Drive, etc. | Low–Medium |
| 5 | Sales Lead Scoring & Qualification | Conversion lift + sales time savings | Prioritizes the right leads and surfaces next-best actions. | Medium |
| 6 | Marketing Content & Personalization | Revenue lift in marketing/sales | Personalized emails, landing pages, product recommendations, content generation. | Medium |
| 7 | Back-office Process Automation | Clear cost reduction | Intake forms, approval workflows, data entry, reporting. | Medium |
| 8 | Demand Forecasting / Predictive Analytics | 140–250% ROI in good cases | Inventory, hiring, capacity, cash flow. | Higher |
| Alternative | What you get | What's missing |
|---|---|---|
| Big consultancy | A strategy, priced for large companies | Long timelines; slides, not software |
| AI software vendor | A tool and a per-seat fee | Doesn't change how the business runs |
| Hire a Chief AI Officer | A permanent executive, after a long search | $300K+ a year before the first result |
| Dev shop | Code built to spec | No business case or operating judgment |
| Internal Team | People who know your systems | No startup experience, running existing business |
| Entrepreneur in Residence | Finds the EBITDA, ships the AI, runs the change | — |
| Step | What you get | Time |
|---|---|---|
| AI Value Scan | The top AI opportunities ranked by EBITDA impact, and the first one scoped | 2 weeks |
| Pilot | The first use case built, shipped and measured | 6–8 weeks |
| Entrepreneur in Residence | I lead the AI program inside the company, 2 days a week | 3-month minimum |
| AI Operating System | AI as a standing capability: the next use case, ongoing improvements, systems kept current | Ongoing |