Make.com’s Fabian Veit On How Artificial Intelligence Can Solve Business Problems

An Interview With Chad Silverstein

Chat. This is the most basic approach, but it is powerful. Everyone at work can benefit from it. Directly interact with an AI to come up with new ideas and concepts, retrieve knowledge and augment yourself. The human stays in control and the AI works alongside you, helping you to be the best you can at work.

In today’s tech-driven world, artificial intelligence has become a key enabler of business success. But the question remains — how can businesses effectively harness AI to address their unique challenges while staying true to ethical principles? To explore this topic further, we are interviewing Fabian Veit.

Fabian Veit is the CEO of Make (make.com), a no-code visual-first automation platform owned by Celonis, headquartered in Prague. As former COO of Celonis, Fabian played a pivotal role in scaling the company from a small team to thousands, focusing on global expansion, including into the U.S. In 2020, he pivoted to leading strategic initiatives and acquisitions, most notably, the acquisition of Make. Today, he oversees a global team of 300+ employees, enabling business agility and growth through Make’s powerful automation platform that empowers organizations to accelerate innovation, build solutions, and respond to challenges with greater speed.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path in AI?

I spent the past five years building a company that offers one of the most intuitive visual-first automation solutions the world has ever seen. With AI, people realize that they can only make the most out of it if they can integrate it into their actual day-to-day processes at work. This is where AI and automation meet.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started working with artificial intelligence?

We have seen our customers build everything from text classification over sentiment analysis to advanced products. One of the most interesting uses we’ve seen was a customer launching their own publishing and ghostwriting company powered by AI and Make.

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?

Creativity: AI excels at doing the busy work. Analyzing a text or coming up with new ideas. But what humans need to bring to the table is real creativity, going beyond what has been stated before.
Empathy: It is also often about how a product or service makes us FEEL. This empathy is what sets humans apart from AI.
Adaptability: Keeping an open mind to how humans and AI can work together is the best way to work with AI. Focus on your strengths, allow AI to shine with its strengths and adapt with the innovations AI brings.

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?

We are putting AI to work in many different areas across our organization. We launched a team of so-called “Samurais”, who are our experts in AI and automation. They help leaders identify opportunities to streamline and simplify work with AI, automation and AI agents. Examples go all the way from how we triage tickets in customer support to how we are generating marketing campaigns. We even have examples like an AI agent in Slack that all employees can ask about specific questions such as the customer sentiment and feedback on any specific product element.

What are some of the common misconceptions you’ve encountered about using AI in business? How do you address those misconceptions?

People sometimes believe that they need a huge AI strategy to transform their business. But in my experience it all starts with people. Find those that are enthusiastic about AI and that are ready to help transform your business for the future. Equip them with powerful tools and allow them to embrace opportunities across the business. If they are empowered, they will create value everywhere and their success will serve as a breeding ground for more enthusiasm for improvement with AI across your organization.

In your opinion, what is the most significant way AI can make a positive impact on businesses today?

I believe that the future is one where people will need to be able to work with AI and orchestrate work that gets done by AI agents. We are still a couple years away from this being a reality, but the future workforce will be hybrid (human — AI agent). This means there is also a need for people to learn new skills. It’s an ambitious and exciting future, where we can all 10x ourselves.

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. Chat. This is the most basic approach, but it is powerful. Everyone at work can benefit from it. Directly interact with an AI to come up with new ideas and concepts, retrieve knowledge and augment yourself. The human stays in control and the AI works alongside you, helping you to be the best you can at work.

2. AI in automated business processes. With technologies like Make, you can directly integrate LLMs into your workflows and automate them. Think of a business development representative that gets a full briefing on the customer they are supposed to meet in their next call, composed by AI and in their inbox before they even had time to look up the company.

3. Agentic workflow automation. Take it one step further and have AI decide with some basic rules. Think of an AI classifying customer requests from a ticketing system and automatically triaging them based on the category.

4. Autonomous AI agents. In this example, the LLM can orchestrate several different actions and workflows and autonomously decide which steps to take to achieve the goal for a given task.

5. Agent to Agent collaboration. Allow for agents to autonomously collaborate. Technologies like Make can offer you visibility into how these agents connect, what tools and automations they are using. At that stage, you are truly in the phase of managing a hybrid workforce.

How can smaller businesses or startups, with limited budgets, begin to integrate AI into their operations effectively?

One project at a time. Many AI agent building platforms and agentic workflow automation platforms offer a freemium or free trial. Start with one concrete use case and create actual business value. Return on investment will be massive and allow you to increase spend as you see the results coming.

What advice would you give to business leaders who are hesitant to adopt AI because of fear, misconceptions, or lack of understanding?

Rather than staying worried about the abstract threat of AI, I would book a workshop or online course. It can be just a couple hours, but it will significantly increase the understanding of what is possible with AI today. Or go to a conference and interview some peers on how they approach it. I believe the effort is low and the gap between those who will lead their industry because they adopted AI and transformed their business versus those who are lagging behind will be huge and at some point insurmountable. Better to start now and take it one step at a time.

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?

It is hard to overstate the transformative impact of the rise of AI. This is similar to the launch of the internet or even the launch of the steam engine. We are at the verge of the next digital revolution.

How do you think the use of AI to solve business problems influences relationships with customers, employees, and the broader community?

There will be a premium on human experiences. People will appreciate human work. Similar to how people pay a significant premium for hand crafted luxurious products today, they will be willing to pay for human-made or human-centered experiences in the digital age.

You are a person of great influence. 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. 🙂

There should be free AI education from grade school to university, but also for practitioners and businesspeople of all age classes. We need to empower people with these incredibly useful technologies. Important that this does not only focus on learning the technology, but also encourages creativity, entrepreneurship and high agency.

How can our readers further follow you online?

This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.

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.

Make.com’s Fabian Veit 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.