In this episode, we're talking to Tricia Napper and David Bauer, co-founders of loomAI, a new AI-native consulting firm for financial services. Fresh from years at Salesforce, Tricia and David are throwing out the conventional AI playbook and starting one level down: with a single decision your business makes every day. They share why so many AI projects stall, why the learning organization beats the all-knowing expert, and why keeping humans at the center matters more as agents multiply. Their take is essential for any customer-obsessed organization deciding where AI belongs, and where it doesn't.
In this episode:
The story behind loomAI and what "getting agents into production one decision at a time" really means
Why the race for AI value is colliding with rising token costs and energy limits, and how automating a bad process just gets you bad results faster
Where Salesforce fits in a consumption-priced, agentic world, and why the trust layer and configuration still matter
The governance problem every CIO is waking up to as agents multiply across the org
The data vocabulary shift: why yesterday's clean data is often today's dead data
What the consulting firm of the future looks like, from the 1,200 decisions a business makes each day to a learning organization that contracts on outcomes
Drawing the line in regulated industries: human-in-the-loop, and why background agents beat customer-facing ones for now
Why human connection becomes more valuable, not less, as everyone races to automate
Timestamp guide:
[00:00] — Intro and what's ahead
[00:48] — Erin and Eric catch up, and set up the loomAI founders
[03:05] — Meet Tricia Napper and David Bauer, and the loomAI origin story
[03:56] — The elevator pitch: agents into production, one decision at a time
[04:31] — Building an AI-native company, and the learning curve of starting up
[06:50] — The AI backlash: ROI pressure, the cost pendulum, and turning off the models
[07:34] — The race for value, and automation vs. reimagination
[10:24] — Where Salesforce fits: trust layer, configuration, and consumption pricing
[14:10] — Buy vs. build, and the CIO fear of agent proliferation
[15:36] — Governance, and the case for a third party managing the guardrails
[16:31] — When you don't need another tool: starting with the problem, not the tech
[18:39] — The data vocabulary shift and the problem of dead data
[21:08] — Who drives AI now, business or IT
[24:29] — The consulting firm of the future and the 1,200-decisions-a-day business
[26:48] — The learning organization vs. the all-knowing expert, and contracting on outcomes
[29:35] — Guardrails in regulated industries and keeping humans in the loop
[32:05] — Keeping the human in front of the customer, and the AI slop problem
[34:08] — Customer Obsessed picks
[37:28] — Erin and Eric debrief: business process, alignment, and keeping people front and center
[39:56] — How AI changes the C-suite, and freeing people from the busy work
[42:01] — The IKEA story: automating service calls and building a new business line
[43:24] — Finding the customers who need a human, and where brands fall short
[46:55] — Why great ideas need space, trust, and culture over surveillance
Customer Obsessed Picks:
Tricia Napper: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, and How to Know a Person by David Brooks
David Bauer: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver