Eric Vaughan

Eric Vaughan All-in-on-AI-CEO of IgniteTech. AI isn't replacing humans, it's extending them. Learn the new playbook for the AI-first era.

09/29/2026

MyPersonas® creates an AI clone of people. Video and voice reproduction with their knowledge. 160 languages. 24/7.

You can ask them any question. Talk to them. Chat with them. However you'd like.
It's grounded in that person's knowledge. If the AI doesn't know the answer, it goes and asks the person. Human in the loop. That's the foundation of software IgniteTech writes.

We're not writing AI to displace humans. We're using AI to empower humans and make them more available.

From my GenAI Expo 2026 keynote. Follow me for more transformation insights.

09/24/2026

My CFO was not pleased.

I went into the Perplexity back end and removed every spending limit I could find. Unlimited. Auto-reload. Just go.

My reasoning: if token costs become a real problem that threatens our targets, we'll have the conversation. Until then, the thing I'm actually worried about is people not burning enough. Because low token burn means low engagement. And low engagement means we're behind.

We're starting to use token burn as an AI DNA metric. Not what tools you have. What you actually run through them.

From my conversation with Taylor Malmsheimer on Section's Engine of AI.

09/22/2026

Most AI hiring screens for belief. We screen for habit.

There's a gap between knowing AI matters and actually reaching for it by default. A lot of candidates live in that gap. They want to use AI. They think it's important. They just haven't built the daily instinct yet.

Our process exists to find the people who have. AI interview before any human interview. Real work assignments. And one simple question: what's on your AI tool belt, and why?

Intention is not DNA. The process tells you which one you're looking at.

From my conversation with Taylor Malmsheimer on Section's Engine of AI.

09/19/2026

One question. Disqualifies more candidates than anything else I ask.

"How did you prepare for today?"

Website scrolling and Google searches is the wrong answer. Not because it's incompetent. Because someone who instinctively uses AI would have fed this company into Perplexity before ever walking in the door. Products, press releases, sectors, background on who they're meeting. For a job they want.

The instinct gives you away before the interview really starts.

From my conversation with Taylor Malmsheimer on Section's Engine of AI.

09/17/2026

A year in, I figured out what actually separated the people who made it from the people who didn't.

Not skill. Not effort. Belief.

And looking back, I would have found a faster way to divide believers from non-believers from the start. Because spending twelve months with someone who's trying without believing is a waste of everyone's time, including theirs.

I don't have a clean prescription for how to find it earlier. But I know now that it was the only variable that actually mattered.

From my conversation with Taylor Malmsheimer on Section's Engine of AI.

09/16/2026

A lot of candidates know AI matters. Fewer have actually built the habit.

That gap shows up fast. The ones who've done the work can tell you exactly what's on their tool belt, what they reach for and why, with the fluency of someone who does it every day. The ones who haven't give you intention. Good answers about what they plan to do. Nothing from what they've actually done.

Aspiration isn't DNA. Evidence is.

From my conversation with Taylor Malmsheimer on Section's Engine of AI.

09/11/2026

The company furthest ahead is the company most at risk of stopping.

Two years into this transformation, ahead of most organizations by a wide margin, and my biggest concern is complacency. Not technology. Not cost. Complacency. Because being better than average is not the same as being at the frontier. We should be the leading voice by now. When I catch us following instead of leading, that's embarrassing.

The second thing we battle every day: the AI is built to agree with you. Not to be honest with you. To satisfy you. Use multiple LLMs, push back, hold it accountable, set standards explicitly. The era of obvious hallucinations is mostly behind us. The era of subtle bias shaped by your own framing is very much here.

Both problems are leadership problems. Neither solves itself.

From my conversation with Taylor Malmsheimer on Section's Engine of AI.

09/03/2026

If you think you're behind, good. If you don't think you're behind, you're doomed. That's the line I keep repeating, because it's true.

The companies I worry about are treating AI like a side project: minor investment, no CEO buy-in, and the comfortable belief they've got time. Large public companies that feel impervious are making the same mistake.

It's going to come down to AI DNA. The companies that build it in will consolidate the market. The ones that don't will be consolidated.

From my conversation with Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan on AI in the AM.

09/01/2026

We didn't post job listings. We sent a signal.

Every open role at IgniteTech carried the same prefix: AI Innovation Specialist. Finance. Marketing. Engineering. Every function. Because the title told candidates exactly who we were looking for before they read a single bullet point.

It worked. We pulled people out of companies where they were being told not to use AI. People with belief and skills and nowhere to put either. We gave them a place.

Then I interviewed every single one of them myself. After rebuilding the company, I wasn't leaving the bar up to chance.

You can develop skill. You cannot install belief. We hired for the one you can't teach.
From my conversation with Taylor Malmsheimer on Section's Engine of AI.

08/27/2026

My advice to enterprise on AI is aggressive. Prakash asked me why. My answer: fear.

Decades as a technologist taught me the fear is specific. Someone finding me in a year or two, asking why I didn't warn them their profession was about to be rewritten. I don't want that conversation.

Tech has cried wolf before: crypto, blockchain, Web3. None of it changed everything. This one's not like that.

From my conversation with Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan on AI in the AM.

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