Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast, talks with Kriti Sharma, CEO of IFS Nexus Black, about how AI-first leadership changes the rules for scaling product-market fit, board communication, and organizational focus. When a CEO uses AI to scale organizational capability across a small group of design partners, Sharma holds that solving multiple connected problems at once outperforms the traditional advice to solve one problem at a time — a shift she credits to the AI-driven capacity her team built at IFS Nexus Black.
This episode is for CEOs deciding whether to scale their organizations one problem at a time or use AI to pursue several connected problems simultaneously within a focused customer base.
Key Takeaways
- Sharma argues CEOs no longer need to follow the traditional advice to solve one problem well before moving to the next. AI now gives teams at IFS Nexus Black the capacity to solve multi-dimensional problems simultaneously, as long as focus stays on the same small set of customers.
- Sharma’s rule for product-market fit is to build with three customers, prospects, or design partners rather than one, since three is enough to reveal patterns without producing custom, bespoke solutions that don’t scale.
- Sharma says CEOs create the strongest board dynamic by assembling the smartest possible team and staying out of execution detail, rather than believing they must personally know every answer, a discipline she applies at IFS Nexus Black.
- Sharma’s engineers immerse directly in customers’ physical environments, including field visits in safety gear, to surface constraints (like technicians needing to operate apps while wearing safety gloves) that a data-first build process would miss entirely.
- Sharma’s team at IFS Nexus Black has found that legacy industrial organizations adopt AI quickly not because of the technology itself, but when a vendor demonstrates outcomes tied directly to the customer’s own operational and supply chain pressures.
How Should a CEO Decide Which Customers Define Product-Market Fit?
Sharma’s product-market fit signal is not first revenue or first contract. It’s when existing customers say they want their own business to run the way her company operates. At IFS Nexus Black, two customers told her in the same week that they wanted their manufacturing or field service operations to run like an “AI-first” company, rather than simply buying a piece of software. Sharma treats that as validation that she’s found the reference customers for real market fit.
She builds around a specific number: three. “The magic number tends to be three, at least for me,” she said. Three customers is enough to spot common patterns without creating one-off, custom builds for each account. Sharma contrasts this with the classic startup advice she was trained on: solve one problem, solve it well, then move to the next. She no longer follows that model. With AI-driven capacity to scale organizational skills, she believes teams can pursue several connected problems for the same small customer set at once, rather than solving a single problem for a broad, undifferentiated market.
How Should a CEO Decide When to Stop Doing the Work Themselves?
Founder CEOs face a specific trap: believing they must know every answer and do every task because the company is theirs. Sharma named this directly as a pattern she has had to fight in herself, having built IFS Nexus Black from the ground up. She knows the exact location of the company’s cyber policies and privacy documents, and she knows how hard it was to close the first customer contract. That level of detail knowledge is useful early, but it becomes exhausting and time-consuming if a CEO doesn’t hand off ownership to a team built to run without them.
Her framework: build the smartest possible team, then get out of the day-to-day work. Sharma’s own team consists of people she describes as entrepreneurial enough to run their own startups, and she says they don’t need her involved in execution. “You don’t tell an artist which paintbrush to use,” she said, quoting her co-founder Nick. The core discipline is knowing when to be hands-on, which she reserves for strategy and customer relationships, and when to step back entirely. That discipline produced a leadership team capable of closing enterprise industrial accounts and running field engagements without her direct involvement, freeing her time for the strategic relationships that require a CEO’s presence.
How Do Legacy Industrial Companies Actually Adopt AI Tools?
Slow-moving industries aren’t resistant to AI itself; they resist AI framed as a technology purchase disconnected from their immediate operational reality. Sharma described a manufacturer in Germany dealing with a 15% tariff increase, a disrupted shipping corridor carrying 12% of global trade, and a customer canceling an order, all in the same week. That is the operating environment IFS Nexus Black has to speak to directly.
“I don’t believe Glenn at all that they’re slow moving,” Sharma said. “Once they see the value that how it’s connecting to their world… let’s go.” Her team doesn’t pitch AI or agents as a category. They show a customer the specific outcome tied to the problem in front of them, then embed alongside that customer’s operation until the model is proven. That embedded approach, tested on job sites rather than built from requirements handed over secondhand, is what converted the German manufacturer’s tariff and supply chain crisis into a signed engagement within the same week the disruption hit.
What Does It Mean for a CEO to Personally “Scale” Using AI?
Sharma described operating “like 10 of me” by fully immersing her own daily workflow in AI tools. She pushes technical work in GitHub alongside coding agents, and has agents work overnight to prepare follow-up strategies and personalized outreach for the next day. She also uses AI tools to challenge her own assumptions and to build emotional intelligence in coaching-style conversations, testing how a situation might look from another person’s perspective before she acts on it.
That personal capacity has a business purpose tied directly to a workforce problem her customers face: retiring technicians whose tacit, decades-deep knowledge has no formal record before they leave. A technician told Sharma directly: “I can hear a bearing fail from 30 feet away. My apprentice can’t yet and figure out how to capture what my ears can hear before you throw me a retirement party.” That account is why AI agents are being positioned to absorb traditional knowledge work at IFS Nexus Black. The goal is to free her team to sit next to retiring experts and capture what they know before that knowledge leaves with them.
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Solve for three, not one | Build with three customers or design partners to find common patterns before scaling, rather than solving a single problem for a broad market | At IFS Nexus Black, this discipline produced two customers in the same week telling Sharma they wanted their own operations to run like an “AI-first” company, the reference-customer signal she treats as true product-market fit |
| Immerse before you build | Engineers and product teams should work physically alongside end users to surface constraints a data-first process would miss | This approach surfaced constraints like glove compatibility and offshore connectivity gaps before launch, and converted the German manufacturer’s live tariff and supply chain crisis into a signed engagement within the same week |
| Hire the team, then release the detail | CEOs should build the strongest possible team and stay out of execution, resisting the instinct to control every decision | Sharma credits this discipline with a leadership team that closes enterprise industrial accounts and runs field engagements independently, freeing her time for the strategic customer relationships that specifically require her involvement |
| Sell the outcome, not the technology | Legacy industrial customers adopt AI fastest when it’s tied to a specific operational problem they’re already facing, not framed as a technology category | IFS Nexus Black’s approach to a German manufacturer facing tariff increases and supply chain disruption focused on that customer’s specific crisis, not a generic AI pitch, and closed within the same week |
Quotes from This Episode
- “I believe now with the superpowers that we have using AI to scale organizations, to scale capabilities, to scale skills, we can solve multi-dimensional problems as long as we stay focused on the same few customers.” — Kriti Sharma, CEO, IFS Nexus Black
- “You don’t tell an artist which paintbrush to use.” — Kriti Sharma, CEO, IFS Nexus Black (quoting her co-founder, Nick)
- “I can hear a bearing fail from 30 feet away. My apprentice can’t yet and figure out how to capture what my ears can hear before you throw me a retirement party.” — Kriti Sharma, CEO, IFS Nexus Black (quoting a technician)
Frequently Asked Questions
Should a CEO solve one problem at a time or pursue multiple problems simultaneously?
Kriti Sharma argues that AI has changed the calculus on this classic startup advice. Rather than solving a single problem completely before moving to the next, she believes CEOs can now use AI to scale organizational capability and pursue multiple connected problems at once, as long as the team stays focused on the same small group of customers rather than spreading across an undifferentiated market.
How many customers should a CEO use to validate product-market fit?
Sharma’s rule is three. Building with three customers, prospects, or design partners reveals patterns common across a target segment without producing one-off, custom solutions for each account. She treats a customer telling her they want their own business to run like her company’s operating model as the clearest signal of real product-market fit.
How can a CEO get legacy, slow-moving industries to adopt AI tools quickly?
Sharma’s approach is to tie AI adoption directly to a customer’s immediate operational reality rather than pitching AI as a technology category. She points to embedding her team physically alongside customers, in one case describing a manufacturer facing tariff increases and supply chain disruption, and showing that customer an outcome connected to the specific crisis they’re facing that day.
Executives Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Careers
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits. Glenn helps leaders scale their companies by scaling themselves first. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
