AI Basecamp — Meet Irish SMEs putting AI to work. Tuesday 13 October 2026, HubSpot HQ Dublin.

• The current market for traditional recruitment agencies
• “Katie”, our AI sales agent: 542 emails and 1,269 LinkedIn connection requests a week, ~10 meetings booked, ~160 hours a month saved
• Building our own CRM
• Services to product: human + agents

• From PepsiCo (SAP and every tool going) to employee #4 at a startup — building the thing I wished I’d had
• The two ways I use AI: when I’m the expert, and when I’m not
• Sales & operations planning end-to-end: a hand-built spreadsheet becomes a team of AI agents that does the prep so I can make the call
• The messy bit: the agents that wouldn’t work together, and the system that fixed it

• How companies can identify their AI skills gaps before investing in more tools or external recruitment
• How we help organisations match the best people to the work where their capabilities can create the greatest value
• How AI can reveal transferable skills that traditional job titles and CVs often hide
• How an AI Skills ROI Calculator can estimate the value of time released, capability developed and better allocation of work

I’ll also briefly show how IKEA applied the same principle at scale: its AI chatbot handled routine enquiries while 8,500 customer-support colleagues developed capabilities in remote interior design, digital sales, relationship-building and complex problem-solving.

• What “Services-as-Software” actually means: the result delivered faster and more consistently by software, with people on the parts that need judgement
• My own firm as the test case: automating the consistent parts made results better, not just faster, and freed up client time
• An AI-native marketing business with 90% of fulfilment automated — whose clients get more attention, not less
• What didn’t work: the prototypes that failed, and why the people doing the work stay in control

• A 95-page stock file turned into a four-page inventory pack — written at 6am by the “company brain” while everyone sleeps
• Ten people running like a company three times the size
• The three free AI Starter Packs built from it: Start Secure, Your First Win, Build the Business Brain

• Bringing AI into a busy agency team without dropping quality
• Keeping clients happy while the way the work gets done changes
• A practical rollout that brings the whole team along — no one left behind
• Where AI earns its place across marketing and content

• Turning a customer feature request into a working prototype in a week
• AI-assisted product design and rapid prototyping — the process and tools
• Validating ideas fast: catching the wrong build in days, not months
• Taking a prototype through to production — and what that really takes

• What really changes when businesses start using AI day to day
• The surprising customer insight — AI as a “second pair of eyes”
• Why reassurance, not features, is what drives real adoption
• Turning fear of getting it wrong into relief and confidence

• Using AI across the whole sales cycle — for SMEs
• The secret ingredient between two teams on identical tools: human capability
• Two sales scenarios, and what separates them
• The six behaviours that fix them: question, structure, verify, frame, translate, integrate

• Where AI regulation is heading, and what it means for a business like yours
• The human and accountability layer that regulations assume — and few businesses have built
• Why getting accountability right is what lets you adopt, build and use AI with confidence