Why Now Is the Safest Time to Take the Riskiest Bet: Founders, Don’t Wait on AI

How much of your hesitation around AI is about real risk—and how much is about uncertainty?

Lately, I’ve had a lot of conversations with other founders about privacy and IP in the age of AI. Most are worried. They fear exposing client data, losing control of their IP, or stepping into a legal gray zone they don’t fully understand. Those are real concerns. But here’s the thing: every transformative technology starts this way: undefined, messy, and full of opportunity for the ones who move first.

AI is so new, so fast, and so powerful that it’s leveling the playing field for founders in a way we’ve never seen before. It’s the first time in decades that small firms can outmaneuver big competitors simply by being bolder and faster.

Privacy: Fear vs. Reality

The biggest concern I hear? “I don’t want my confidential data out there.”

Totally fair. None of us want client information showing up where it doesn’t belong. But let’s keep this in perspective.

In 2023, the world created about 120 zettabytes of data. Imagine you had an accidental data leak equal to every Microsoft public financial filing for the past 10 years. That’s maybe a couple gigabytes of data.

To put this in perspective, it’s like fishing in Lake Mead and accidentally dropping your beer in it. With Lake Mead doubling in size every year. Your beer is still there, except nobody’s looking for it and it’s useless anyway because they can’t drink it.

The truth is that your confidential data doesn’t matter to the web. What matters is how fast you learn to use AI to make better decisions, faster than your competitors.

Incidentally, if you are worried about data leaks, focus on your employees. IBM research noted over 83% of organizations surveyed reported at least one insider attack. That’s the real risk.

Copywriting and IP: The Legal Fog

The second concern is about intellectual property. “If I use AI to create something, do I really own it?”

Right now, the law is murky. I was fortunate to recently attend a session with Will Schultz of Merchant Gould, who’s quickly becoming the go-to AI lawyer. He shared a fascinating precedent: photographs are protected works under copyright law.

Think about that. When a photographer clicks a button, they didn’t create the mountain or the model. They composed the shot, set the conditions, and captured it. That intent made it theirs.

Prompting AI works much the same way. When you guide it with your files, your tone, and your vision then you’re adding human authorship. The gray area is how much alteration counts as “yours.”

Regulators haven’t caught up yet, and probably won’t for years. But that’s not a reason to wait. It’s a reason to start experimenting now, because the early adopters are the ones defining where the lines will be drawn.

The Founder’s Advantage: Nobody’s Coming for You

Here’s the unspoken truth: nobody is coming after your firm for AI infractions.

You’re not Coca-Cola or OpenAI. There’s just not enough meat on the bone. The lawsuits will go after billion-dollar companies and viral creators, not boutique service firms testing prompts to work smarter.

That’s our advantage. Right now, we can take bold swings with low downside. When big companies are tied up in compliance committees, small firms can move fast, learn fast, and win fast. This is what we do best as founders. We take calculated risks while everyone else is waiting for permission.

This Is Our Window

Every big leap—electricity, the internet, cloud—started in confusion. The rules always come later. The founders who jumped in early wrote the playbook for everyone else. You know their names. Edison. Ford. Jobs.

AI is no different. It’s the most significant equalizer of our lifetime. A small firm with five people and an AI-optimized process can now rival competitors twenty times their size.

This window won’t stay open long. Once the regulations tighten and best practices are set, the first-mover advantage is gone.

A Risk Worth Taking

We built our companies by taking smart risks. This is one worth taking.

Use AI, but use it wisely. Here are some things we are doing at Fintelligent to reduce risk:

• Using AI Assistants to deliver better results for our customers. I wrote Finance for Founders to create a repeatable framework for founders to make better financial decisions. We created an AI assistant and trained it on the book so we can embed those principles in our entire staff and deliver a higher quality product.
• Using AI to catch mistakes. Even A-players with the best of intentions are far from perfect. AI provides a critical second set of eyes, identifying small issues before they become big ones.
• Using ChatGPT for Business as it does not share our info with LLMs. If it turns out I’m wrong about that, I’m happy to participate in the class-action lawsuit.
• Engaged an external MSP to manage our IT stack, put proper cybersecurity protocols in place and harden our processes so we are protected as best as possible.
• Secured appropriate insurance coverage as an additional layer of protection.

These are reasonable steps to mitigate the risks I see in AI and cybersecurity overall. My hope is that in five years, when others are still debating what’s safe, we will already have systems, results, and confidence they’re still trying to build.

The Payoff

AI won’t replace founders. But founders who use AI will replace those who don’t.

This is our moment to experiment, while the stakes are small and the upside is massive. Nobody’s handing out roadmaps. That’s fine. We’ve never needed them.

So don’t wait for clarity. Create it.

That’s what founders do.

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Connect with Rob Ripp on LinkedIn and check out his book Finance for Founders on Amazon.