What does it really take to grow a business, leave a senior role, and start again in the middle of the AI boom? In this episode of Scaling With AI, Alex Bacon shares an excerpt from his appearance on The Scale-up Podcast, covering his journey from helping to scale a business from £4 million to £38 million in revenue to launching BrightKeel AI.

Alex talks honestly about growth, funding, culture, acquisitions and the pressure of working inside a fast-moving scale-up. He also explains why AI adoption should not be treated as another IT project, and why leaders need to own the strategy, guardrails and culture around using tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot.

Expect practical thinking on AI in business, sales cycles, marketing strategy, tender responses, AI consultancy, and the gap between automation hype and real operational improvement.

For founders, operators and senior leaders looking at artificial intelligence in business and wondering where to start, this is a grounded conversation worth hearing.