Jason Hishmeh Podcast Transcript
Jason Hishmeh joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Jason Hichme. Jason Hichme is an entrepreneur, investor, and technology leader with 25-plus years building and securing technology from early-stage startups to the Fortune 500. He’s a co-founder, partner at Variance and Equet. He helps companies put AI to work where it moves real business outcomes with security and compliance built in from day one.
Jason has been featured in over 150 articles by leading news outlets, sharing expert insights on AI, cybersecurity, business technology, finance compliance, and startups. Well, good afternoon, Jason. Welcome to the show.
Jason Hishmeh: Thanks for having me.
Brian-Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. Love that you made the time today.
I know you’re generally out of New York, but you travel so much to your European offices, and you’re in Ukraine today. So again, that’s, that’s a big stretch for calendars and time zones, so I appreciate that here in Kansas City. So Jason, if you don’t mind jumping into your first question, your story has a great origin.
You started as an accountant in a Fortune 500 department where nobody had a computer, asked for one, and discovered you were getting paid to play with computers, kinda like my background with fun part being automating the work around you. From there, you spent 25 years in tech and cybersecurity leadership at companies like GE, S&P Global, Allstate, State Farm before co-founding Variance and Aequit.
How did that habit of raising your hand carry you from corporate accounting all the way to an AI entrepreneur?
Jason Hishmeh: Yeah, great question. Yeah, for me technology is fun. So it’s fun to take on technology, especially before technology was popular. So in my first job decades ago, I worked at a Fortune five hundred company in the accounting finance department, every month doing month-end closes month after month, following my checklist faithfully.
At that time, nobody even had a computer on their desk. It was not a typical thing. I asked for a computer. That was an odd request, but they fulfilled it. They gave me a computer, and the fun part was automating away a lot of the repetitive monthly tasks that I had to do as an accountant in that finance department.
And for me, hours just disappeared. It was so fun to work with technology, and I could build things that would help everyone in my department get time back by automating repetitive processes. And that company started to roll out a-an ERP platform called SAP. So I also volunteered to work on that project, got to travel around the country and got to see how big companies operate, how they deploy technology, how they run their businesses.
And over the years, my experience compounded, like that was, that was accounting and finance, then I started to get into application, ERP systems, infrastructure, application development over the years, cybersecurity. So started to learn a new layer of the puzzle each time. But the– I still today use that finance and accounting background.
Like I have to know that the business and technology initiatives are gonna actually create value for the business, and they have to know that from a financial standpoint, how is it gonna impact things financially. So for me, it was really fun to raise my hand and get involved in new projects, deal with fun technology, and build a skill set in financial technology and cybersecurity, application development, all those areas to put together like a unique skill set.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Love that backstory. Being an accountant and to me, I’ve always been in technology, but I, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I could be an accountant.” And you’ve, you’ve kinda flipped that script there. You found technology was cool and fun. Your curiosity do– really drove you to ask for that computer initially.
And then when you started to automate tasks for speed and efficiency you just opened the floodgates, diving in, coding, cybersecurity, et cetera. But at the end of the day, you are building value for the business, which is really cool. So thank you. Jason, AIOps deploys agents inside the software a business already uses, like finance, sales, HR, operations, engineering, you name it, aiming to give each person back five to twenty-five hours a week.
Why did you choose to embed agents in existing tools rather than asking companies to adopt yet another platform? And where are you seeing the biggest time savings?
Jason Hishmeh: Another great question. Okay, so a lot of companies im-implement a lot of apps. They don’t need yet another app to implement. Employees do not want to learn another app.
They have tools they use, processes they use. They wanna work within those apps they’re already using to get things done faster. One actually interesting study I read from McKinsey, eighty-eight percent of companies use AI regularly, but only a small fraction of them, like six percent, actually get results out of it.
And so part of the problem is when you’re releasing new products that people need to learn, they get overwhelmed with that. They don’t wanna learn those pro-products, new products. And so a lot of times those initiatives, those implementation projects die because of resistance from users. So putting those tools inside those existing tools you’re using, existing platforms you’re using is much easier for people to consume.
So they could do the same work they’re doing now, but get done faster. And you see that in a lot of platforms you use where they’re implementing AI functionality into them But a lot of companies also need to figure out, like, how their employees are operating. Does it even make sense? Do they need to adjust those processes first?
‘Cause if you speed up a bad process, it’s just gonna be a lot more bad outcomes faster, and we don’t want that. So a lot of times we see the most– the biggest savings in repetitive, boring work that they’re doing, whether it’s data entry, trying to get approvals for things, trying to move information between platforms that they’re using.
That– Those are the areas where we most like to, to make more efficient with AI employees and A-AI ops to give people back those five to twenty-five hours a week. And then when a human decision needs to be involved, it pauses to wait for that human input to go to the next step. One of the biggest differences of what we’re implementing, many companies will hire AI development companies to come and implement AI automation, and whether it works or not at end, just like that McKinsey study, like very small fraction of companies is actually working.
Whether it works or not, they’re still paying the cost of implementing that. The difference with what we’re offering with our AI ops product is we’re bearing all the risk. We’re funding the implementation, the deployment, the pilot of it. If it doesn’t work, they don’t pay. So there’s no risk. We’re carrying all the risk for them.
So we’re implementing it and funding the implementation. And when it hits the numbers we’ve all agreed, th- only then would they pay for it. So that’s the big differentiator of what we’re rolling out.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. I like that where e-especially we, we see this today where, everybody’s trying to implement AI, whether they have a consultant or not.
But your offer of, you know, until you see results you don’t pay, and that’s, that’s amazing. But you’re right. I wanna highlight a few things, Jason. Obviously, there’s a lot of application and software fatigue for employees today, right? We keep bringing in new stuff. So I like the idea here, implementing AI into existing tools for that better adoption, and then you’ll start to see those efficiency gains.
Your stats on that eighty-eight percent of companies use AI regularly, but only a fraction of that are truly getting that ROI, and we’re still seeing that, of course, unfortunately. But w– the, the big takeaway here for me was that monotonous and repetitive tasks is where you’re seeing the most gains with AI deployment.
So thank you. Jason, as both a chief technology officer and a chief information security officer, you’re unusual in that you built security and compliance in from day one rather than bolting it on later. In the rush to deploy AI, where are companies creating the most dangerous blind spots, and what’s the cost of treating security as an afterthought in this agentic era?
Jason Hishmeh: Sure. One, one of the scariest things I see, and probably see this every day with ChatGPT and all of these chat applications, people can connect different existing tools into them and, and let them surface information or make changes to those tools. A lot of companies, a lot of employees are giving these autonomous AI agents access to production mission-critical systems, access to things without any kind of guardrails, any kind of security compliance.
That’s very dangerous. And a lot of times they may not even know it’s happening. It may be what we call like shadow IT, things happening that are not sanctioned access that employees are giving to these chatbots or AI tools. So having guardrails in place is really important from a security and compliance standpoint.
And we need to make sure, like, unsupervised agents only have the access they need, have logging, have audit traceability of what they’re doing, and that they surface decisions people need to be involved in. So, like, when I onboard AI agents I’m onboarding them like people. What licenses do they need? What permissions do they need?
What access do they need? That has to go through the same process for people as for agents. It’s very important we consider security compliance the same way. And if you’re trying to build a product, if you’re selling a product or selling a service as a company, and you’re not gonna be able to speak to how you’re securing your business and your customers’ data, that’s going to impede closing deals.
That’s going to put your company at risk, and you’re not gonna be able to blame an AI agent for taking down a production system or breaching security and leaking customer information. Someone has to be responsible for what the AI agent does. Some human has to be accountable
Brian Thomas: Totally get that. And, and we’re seeing that now, and there’s really some cool plugins.
Obviously people are starting to use Cloud CoWork Chat- OpenAI’s or ChatGPT Codex and then they’ve got plugins for the browser. And again, as you talked about, because AI is being adopted at the desktop sometimes employees are a step ahead of their employer. Some companies have allowed this type of use with their employees to use these tools, and AI is actually leveraging the employee’s privileged access level.
So if some employees maybe are an analyst in a particular application where they have elevated privileges they’re using the browser to do a lot of that work leveraging AI, and that could seriously create some serious problems, as you know. You highlighted that. So I, I agree with you, security and compliance is key.
We definitely need to have a roadmap for AI deployment, deployment for staff across organizations. It’s so important. Jason, last question of the day. You said world models are redefining how machines learn, plan, and make decisions, and you imagine AI infiltrating every level of the customer journey within five years.
Walking into a store where every shelf magically knows what you need before you do. Paint that picture out. Where do you see AI heading over the next five years, and what should businesses be doing today to be ready for it rather than being left behind?
Jason Hishmeh: Sure. In five years, I don’t see AI as a tool you’ll open and chat with.
It’s more something that’s gonna be woven into everything you’re doing. It’s gonna be something that understands your business, understands how you plan and make decisions in your business, not just respond to questions and react. It’s going to be something that understands the model of your entire business.
And so I do see, like from a customer journey, if you walk into a store, it might, for example, know already what you need or what you’ve purchased in the past, information about you. Same in an online experience to be something more useful. Already I go to some sites, and I do wish it knew the right product I needed, so I didn’t have to spend time searching for that product.
I do see a lot of companies that are… Like you mentioned, there’s lots of tools out there, and they’re– they see a cool tool, they jump on it, they get a subscription, they give it out to their employees and say, “Use this.” They haven’t thought about security compliance, how it’s gonna impact their company, things like that.
So for me, those companies are not gonna be the ones that succeed as much as the companies who really understand how their businesses is working, how to implement those AI tools into different parts of their business. And instead of just adding more AI tools, they’re, they’re going deep with specific set of tools, and they’re starting small with small projects to implement ’em and get wins with AI, see how they can operate more efficiently.
I think those are the businesses that are gonna pull ahead of their competitors. So even though there’s a small percentage of companies using AI chatbots, even smaller percentage of companies that are em-embedding it in their company and having it at this more sophisticated level of integration.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. You’re absolutely right. a lot of the questions here, sometimes I ask people, “What are your– what’s your thoughts five, 10 years out?” And they’re like, “Gosh, that’s too far out. Things will be totally flipped upside down by then.” And I agree. You– As you mentioned, your insights AI will no longer be really a prompt receiving tool.
It’ll be integrated into your entire life and business. And you did talk about how today we’re doing a search and you wish AI was a little bit maybe a step ahead of you in, in finding those items that you need. I recently had a guest here on the show that develops neurotechnology where the brain activity and thoughts can directly be sent into the AI.
That is coming alive. So, truly we’re, we’re moving into the Jetsons era. I just hope that everybody understands that integrity needs to be part of this. Guardrails are so important these days. So I appreciate your insights. And Jason, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Jason Hishmeh: Thank you for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Jason Hishmeh Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
