An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Let me be clear: we are not talking about replacing people with AI; we are talking about enhancing individuals’ capabilities so they can become the best versions of themselves.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview David Mahbub.
David Mahbub is a global strategist, TEDx speaker, and Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer at MACH9, where he focuses on helping brands drive growth by aligning narrative, culture, and technology in real time. Over the years, he has worked across more than 40 markets, advising Fortune 500 and high-growth companies on how to stay relevant in complex and fragmented environments. He has also developed frameworks like the Whisper Economy and Momentum Economy to better understand how influence and growth evolve today. David is a member of the Forbes Business Council and an Endeavor mentor.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path in AI?
In our early days, we did not envision a company with our own developed tools, but we were facing many major challenges in the market, and there were no tangible solutions to address our clients’ needs and our vision for solving them. So, we’ve been playing around with machine learning for quite a while to predict outcomes, for example, the likelihood that your prospects will engage with your brand. We developed our own predictive models and a complete suite of AI-powered products, here at Mach9. We were so thrilled when genAi came into the equation. We immediately embedded it in our process, especially in data and analytics.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started working with artificial intelligence?
I think the biggest wow moment came on a project with a global pharmaceutical company that had been struggling for months and spending millions on the problem. When we discovered we could accomplish what super large agencies were trying to deliver with a relatively small team, I remember looking to my partner and saying, “Did we do it already? Is this right? It’s like a superpower.” From that moment, each of our team members suddenly became 3–4x more effective. Let me be clear: we are not talking about replacing people with AI; we are talking about enhancing individuals’ capabilities so they can become the best versions of themselves.
You are a successful leader in the AI space. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
You need to be open to innovation instead of trying to compete against it. Our philosophy at Mach9 is to incorporate innovation as quickly as possible rather than reinventing the wheel. Eg: at the beginning, we were developing every single machine learning algorithm ourselves, but thanks to GenAi, we exponentially developed new models that are more accurate and closer to our clients’ needs. Currently, we have 5 AI-Driven products that range from detecting narratives no one has seen to simulating campaign outcomes with AI Synthetic audiences at a level of detail and completeness never seen before.
Your team needs to be intellectually curious and embrace AI again as an enhancer, not a replacer, which means they should welcome this innovation since it will make their work better and faster. For example, a couple of years ago, our Mach9 offering was not at par with big agencies because we were focusing on a few core services. Thanks to AI, our team grew exponentially in capabilities (not in numbers), which elevated the Mach9 offering to be competitive with the biggest agencies out there. So we see our employees as superheroes since AI gave them superpowers. Our team’s curiosity has led to constant improvement of our solutions and testing of innovative ways.
You need to make commercial use of the new technologies and not stick to buzzwords and flashy speeches. This means that for every new technology, we carefully consider how to turn it into business solutions that drive business outcomes for our clients. For example, we evolved our first solution, ATLAS, which identifies real opinion leaders and places them in simulated focus groups that provide you with inspiration and assessment of our clients’ campaigns in light speed, resulting in significant savings in traditional focus groups and time. We did not stick only to the sexy buzz of “how cool” our AI is; everything is about bottom-line results.
Let’s jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you share a specific example of how you or your organization used AI to solve a major business challenge? What was the problem, and how did AI help address it?
One of my favorite examples was with a Fortune 500 company, where they came to us, sort of challenging us on a core problem “that could be fixed by anyone so far.” Long story short, they were having issues in their emerging markets and couldn’t tackle them using the methods they had used in the past. We showed them our approach to addressing 4 core business challenges they (and many companies) face.
How can we provide our clients with foresight into what will pop, what will trend, which issues may turn into risks, and emerging opportunities that no one has seen and that competitors have not capitalized on? In other words, we don’t give a picture of what is happening; we give a picture of what will happen next.
We need to understand our client’s desires, pain points, unmet needs, and even hidden needs with an extreme level of detail never seen before, and all this needs to happen at lightspeed. In other words, we provide our clients with a view of future audience needs long before anyone else can detect them.
To significantly shorten the process from idea to execution. Through AI, we can run hundreds of campaigns, improve and enhance them before they launch, and do so in a matter of a few days. This reduces the process for Fortune 500 companies from 6–8 months, and, moreover, the campaigns end up being much more effective and impactful since they are tailored to address their specific audiences.
What are some of the common misconceptions you’ve encountered about using AI in business? How do you address those misconceptions?
Most of our clients and competitors think that AI is about replacing people, while we differ from that view. Our starting point is that AI enhances people’s capabilities. In our opinion, it’s not only about driving efficiencies; it should be about revelation, foresight, and, more importantly, inventing solutions (creating) that, without AI, would never have been conceivable. We believe the obsession with AI agents replacing humans is the wrong approach. AI agents should be about discovery and about elevating our creativity and ideas. We focus on using AI to develop solutions that didn’t exist before, and that were unimaginable a few years ago.
In your opinion, what is the most significant way AI can make a positive impact on businesses today?
The most basic one, as discussed, is to drive efficiency, execute business processes faster, and probably better. But again, we don’t believe this is the only, or even the main, benefit of AI. We see AI again as a way to turn your imagination into reality, as a source of inspiration, stimulation, and amplification of your own strengths and capabilities, and yes, why not, to address some shortcomings. So we built our AI-Driven products to:
- Predict the future.
- Meet unmet or hidden audience needs in the forms of communication, product development, services, etc.
- Discover new technologies and advance human knowledge in ways we have never seen before.
Ok, let’s dive deeper. Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways AI Can Solve Complex Business Problems”? These can be strategies, insights, or tools that companies can use to make the most of AI in addressing their challenges. If possible, please share examples or stories for each.
1. Predict the Future
We combined social media data and first-party data with AI predictive modeling to detect issues and opportunities well before they occur. We called it AI Active Listening.
2. Meet Unmet Audience Needs
We run AI synthetic audience focus groups against existing and future campaigns to determine what resonates more with our audience and what does not. In addition, we simply ask our synthetic audiences to provide us with ideas, and often they reveal blind spots not considered by our clients before.
3. Reduction in the Cycle from Idea to Reality
Foresight, audience understanding, and now the production of content at speeds never seen before result in a reduction of the 6–8 months to a few weeks, with better and more relevant results. And it is not only about creating content; it’s all the way from adapting narratives through something we call AI Narrative Intelligence and adapting them to what the market says, how your different target audiences talk and communicate, and how your brand speaks, so we can build stories that are built to resonate, endure, and travel.
How can smaller businesses or startups, with limited budgets, begin to integrate AI into their operations effectively?
I think we are the best testament to the reality that very small agencies can compete with the largest multinational agencies in the world. It just requires a simple formula, being intellectually curious and open-minded to embrace technologies, and making sure those technologies are applied to deliver business outcomes for our clients. So we integrate AI into everything we do at Mach9, from scheduling our team’s time to developing predictive models, campaigns, and monitoring and tracking campaigns.
What advice would you give to business leaders who are hesitant to adopt AI because of fear, misconceptions, or lack of understanding?
The advice is not to do nothing because something you don’t like is going on. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If you don’t jump now, you will be disrupted. So, do it for conviction or do it for survival, but you have no option. And finally, not everything is only about reaping humans; in the machine group, it’s about enhancing humans. The stage of “fear” on IT is close to gone. The truth is that from this moment on, AI can only get better, and as Jaime said, it is a reality. So drop the fear and embrace it, hear it as your superpower suite, and keep learning because we all are going to keep on learning and mastering each new development.
In your opinion, how will AI continue to shape the business world over the next 5–10 years? Are there any trends or emerging innovations you’re particularly excited about?
Content creation, accelerating the journey from idea to execution, transforming data from description to prediction, finding ways to connect with your audience, and developing products.
How do you think the use of AI to solve business problems influences relationships with customers, employees, and the broader community?
Some clients are embracing AI faster than others, but there is still a big discrepancy about whether AI is meant to replace people. On the other side, some clients are not yet geared to embrace AI; for example, they face many internal challenges with their legal teams about how to incorporate AI into their marketing efforts. However, we see a major shift compared with 2 years ago. In our case, we can only talk positively about it because we have become highly competitive with big agencies on speed to market and cost, delivering better and cheaper, so our relationships with clients, consumers, and the team only get better.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people through AI, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Finding a cure for diseases that have been afflicting people for generations. So it’s not about replacing people, it’s about finding unimaginable solutions. It’s about space travel, technological discoveries, and, unfortunately, it appears to be a race to use AI in the long run to eliminate jobs, but at Mach9, we think the opposite. In the long run, whoever opts to focus on using AI to develop new technologies is the one who will win.
Thank you for sharing these insights!
About The Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator.
David Mahbub Of MACH9 On How Artificial Intelligence Can Solve Business Problems was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.