Private equity firms need to shift from viewing AI as a cost-cutting tool to understanding its potential for generating net-new revenue, which requires showing tangible live deployments rather than demos.
Melisa observes that PE firms still default to cost-cutting conversations because they haven't seen platforms like Netic that generate net-new revenue. She argues the path forward is showing live deployments with real customer data — including over $600 million generated for Netic's customers — rather than running demos. ✦ AI generated
Melisa Tokmak · No Priors · 2026-07-31 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 30:49
“I will say though it's still they are always the first conversations very focused on cost cutting... how do you think about your customer base in terms of just like the rate at which they'll adopt new things?”
I will say though it's still they are always the first conversations very focused on cost cutting because I think they don't see a lot of products or platforms like ours. I'm not really there to cut your costs. Sure that is happening in this way but I'm really interested in this is how you're going to make net new revenue. So that is new. You have to actually start that conversation. You have to show them intangible examples because otherwise it still focuses on how do we get to the bottom line and cut some costs, right? But they have to almost expand their horizon on thinking about what else is possible with AI, right? It would be pretty sad if we used AI only for cost cutting.
verbatim transcript · starts at 30:49
30:49way but I'm really interested in this is how you're going to make net new revenue. So that is new. You have to actually start that conversation. You have to show them intangible examples because otherwise it still focuses on how do we get to the bottom line and cut some costs, right? But they have to almost expand their horizon on thinking about what else is possible with AI,
31:09right? It would be pretty sad if we used AI only for cost cutting. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. What do you outside of what NetC is doing? What are you most excited about in terms of the future in AI? >> I am really excited a little bit about my personal story. So one of the you know when I didn't have access to anything uh one of the in my
31:28time maybe the technology that helped is that I would find one or two people who graduated from my high school like to read some of my essays or look at my work and give feedback or Facebook messenger them and it was it was just being able to talk when they were in the US in colleges and they went from Turkey. It was pretty crazy. So like I
31:47will give the answer of education because I I think it will change so many lives of people who otherwise would not even think about this world exist. So I'm personally really excited about that and no one will be limited anymore that like everything you want to learn and everything you want to do is kind of in your pocket, right? So we made the world a lot more about agency which I'm
32:14excited about. Um, and I cannot wait to see that unfold. >> Yeah, it's very exciting. I think uh one big lesson for me is always you can just go do stuff like you don't need permission, you don't need to learn stuff, you can just go do things. So, >> but you know that makes it also a little bit scary too then when you see people not doing stuff then it's a little bit