Proving the Business Value of AI With Equiteq

Neil C. Hughes (0:00)

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How can you tell whether AI is making services business more valuable? Or simply making its sales presentation look more convincing? Well, today I'm going to be joined by Robby Riggs, Global Chief Transformation and Operations Officer and Head of Coverage at Equiteq. And Robby brings a perspective as someone who has built and sold a consulting firm before moving into investment banking. So today, what I want to discuss is what buyers look for when they're assessing AI capability.

Explore why faster delivery doesn't automatically mean lasting value and what happens to the people whose time technology frees up. And there are quite a few useful lessons here for founders, managers and indeed anyone being asked to prove that AI is working. And thankfully, the test involves evidence rather than counting how many times AI appears in a slide deck. But enough from me. Let's hear Robby's perspective right now.

Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

Robby Riggs (1:49)

Yeah, thanks for having me, Neil.

My name is Robby Riggs. I got my start in my career in consulting. Working with Fortune 500 companies to implement large-scale transformation. And that ultimately led me to start my own company. So I work with a co-founder. We built a firm from just the two of us to more than 250 people globally. We had offices in the US., in Ecuador. We had people in Brazil and India, really learned how to operate, run and scale a professional services firm globally. And I, at the end of 2024, sold that company called The Bridge to North Highland. A private equity backed strategic buyer in our space. And that led me to thinking, what do I want to do next? And the opportunity to learn something new, learn a new skill, learn a new industry is what led me to Equiteq. So over the last year and change, I've been driving our team here at Equiteq. We are a global boutique investment bank. Our focus is on organizations that are transforming the world through technology. So think technology services, specialty consulting, and the like. And my role is to drive the engine of the bank, how we operate day to day, and then coming alongside founders as a former founder myself to provide that perspective and really bridge the gap between the bankers and the founders. So something that is a new adventure every day. I have learned a ton in the last year, taking what we learned, helping organizations transform to partner with operators to make sure that they are doing the right things to create value for their organizations.

Neil C. Hughes (3:26)

Well, I love what you're doing here. When you said they're transforming the world through tech, that's one of the reasons I was excited to get you on, because every week on this podcast, we explore the world of technology. But most importantly, what is AI or how is AI impacting the workplace right now? We see it everywhere on our news feeds, but what does it mean inside an organization? Where does it move the need or what kind of difference does it make? Of course, if we zoom into your area of expertise, AI is rapidly changing how consulting and services firms deliver their work. But what are you seeing here? What is actually changing in transactions today and what is still being overstated or possibly guilty of slightly being hyped?

Robby Riggs (4:09)

It's so interesting because we internally within the bank, we're doing everything we can to leverage technology and automation and AI to enable our bankers to be more effective and more efficient. Of course, we're wanting to take advantage of that technology. But we have a very interesting perspective when it comes to the transaction. So let's say, for example, you have Neal Consulting, Inc. and you're looking to monetize that asset. You want to partner with a private equity company to take on investment and scale faster in this transaction that's upcoming. What's real is AI is now a standard diligence work stream across every deal. So the private equity company that's buying you is going to dig in and understand is this real, is it slideware? Is this methodology or is it completely dispersed throughout the organization that everyone is using? So that's real. It's also real that our delivery on what I would call narrow, more repeatable work is absolutely faster. So we can be more effective. Those two things are absolutely real. What's overstated is the idea of like AI native. The reality is there are very few AI native, AI first firms. Most of it is hyped. And the idea that AI is being delivered at scale already, ubiquitously, is completely overhyped. I have some bias here that at the state, I spent the first part of my career, as I alluded to, implementing technology in Fortune 500 companies. And the pace at which new technology is adopted is incredibly slow. Inertia is a powerful headwind.