Aron AI Secures $8M from Menlo and Storm Ventures

Vijay Eswaran, Founder and Executive Chairman of QI Group, discusses the company’s evolution from e-commerce and direct sales into multiple sectors, Asia’s entrepreneurial roots, people-centred leadership and the impact of AI.

If I ran a successful company, I’d fund a startup whose only job was to put us out of business. Seriously. Give five smart people a small budget, access to everything they can legally know about us, and one assignment: If you were starting from zero today, how would you steal our customers? No protecting the existing product. No defending the org chart. No worrying about sunk costs. No explaining why something “can’t” be done because of the way the company currently operates. Build the attacker. What would they charge? What would they automate? What would they eliminate completely? Which customer frustration would they obsess over? What would they do with AI that we haven’t because it threatens a process, department, or business model we already have? Then I’d make leadership sit through the pitch. Not because the current company should blow itself up. Because I’d want to see the business from the one perspective successful companies eventually lose: the perspective of someone who owes the past absolutely nothing. That gets especially interesting right now because AI is lowering the cost of challenging established assumptions. A tiny team can research an industry, analyze customer complaints, prototype products, test messaging, model economics, and build surprisingly convincing first versions faster than ever. The hypothetical competitor doesn’t even need to be right. It just needs to expose the places where the existing company has started confusing “difficult for us” with “impossible.” And I wouldn’t bury this in an innovation department. I’d pull people from operations, customer service, sales, finance, product—especially the ones who keep noticing things that make them say, “If we were starting today, we’d never do it this way.” Then give them permission to be dangerous for a week. Because somewhere right now, somebody actually is building the company you would build if you had the advantage of starting over. I’d rather meet them while they’re still imaginary. Founders: if I gave five people inside your company seven days to design the startup most likely to beat you, what do you think they’d attack first?

👉 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞: https://lnkd.in/gWaGAUQ2. Building and scaling a successful startup requires more than adopting the latest technologies. As AI continues to transform industries, startups and emerging businesses must focus on how it can enable smarter decisions, faster execution, and new opportunities for growth. Read this article https://lnkd.in/gKbccWGX by McKinsey & Company to explore how AI creates economic value beyond cost reduction by improving decision-making, optimizing the use of existing assets, and helping organizations identify and capture opportunities faster. At Blue Sky Incubators, we believe innovation thrives when promising ideas are supported by the right ecosystem, expertise, and resources. We help founders and emerging ventures navigate new technologies, strengthen their business capabilities, and turn innovative ideas into scalable, sustainable businesses. By connecting entrepreneurs with mentorship, strategic guidance, and a collaborative innovation ecosystem, we enable ventures to make better decisions and build for long-term growth. #BlueSkyIncubators #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Innovation #StartupEcosystem #Entrepreneurship #VentureBuilding #StartupGrowth #BusinessGrowth #Founders

The hottest pitch in startup land right now is AI roll-ups. Buy a traditional, boring services company, add AI on top, double the valuation. I like the thesis. I have done two full acquisitions in my last two roles, both on exactly this. I led them end to end, from sourcing the target to driving synergies after the deal closed, and it is not as simple as it sounds. Three things decide whether it works. None of them show up in the pitch deck. 1) The promoter's mindset, not the tech stack Most of these firms are run the old way. Gut, spreadsheets, relationships built over decades. And most promoters are not bullish on tech. That's fair. Technology wasn't what built their business. But in both deals I closed, I saw the opposite. Promoters in their sixties, not from the tech world. But before either deal closed, they spent weeks with us understanding the product. Sat through detailed demos. Told us where they thought it could do wonders, and where it fell short. They sounded like a 20-year-old seeing the internet for the first time. That belief is the whole game. The promoter sets the tone for the organisation. If they are not sold, the team never will be, and your AI layer sits unused. 2) Relationships, not just delivery B2B services run on relationships. Good delivery is the entry ticket. It is not what keeps the client. If you do not understand the industry, you will struggle to build the trust the promoter spent years earning. That relationship does not transfer with the share purchase agreement. 3) Everyone has to win The acquirer. The acquired company. Its employees. If even one of them feels squeezed, the whole deal is at risk. I learnt this the hard way when a promoter walked away from the deal after 6 months of the process. We had signed the term sheet, done the diligence, and the paperwork. What we had not done was earn enough trust for them to believe the deal was good for them too. So yes, the roll-up thesis makes sense on a spreadsheet. But you are not buying a spreadsheet. You are buying a promoter's belief, years of client relationships, and a room full of people deciding whether to stay. AI can double the valuation. But only if the promoter, the relationships, and the people come along with it.

McKinsey recently released a playbook for creating value with AI and it included an important differentiator that separates successful implementations from those that do not deliver value: an operating model built for speed. This operating model has some critical hallmarks that are really indicators of an organization centered around value: → Embedded delivery capabilities → Work was organized around customer journeys (a.k.a. value chains) → Delivery teams were cross-functional But only 10% of companies have adopted an operating model like this. It's not AI that is going to differentiate the winners of the future. It's understanding a business as a value delivery system. Technology is just enabled beneficially inside the value delivery system when the organization already understands it. Worried about being in the 90% of companies that aren't making this shift? Let's chat. A Centering Around Value workshop will be the best $2,500 USD investment in the future success of your organization. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gSxgB5TY

AI may have killed the argument for raising more money. For years, the startup playbook was relatively simple: Raise capital → hire aggressively → build faster → acquire customers → raise the next round. AI is disrupting the economics behind that playbook. A 10-person team can now produce what previously required 30. Engineering cycles are shorter. Customer support can scale without headcount growing linearly. Marketing, research, analytics and even parts of finance can be automated. So here's the uncomfortable question: If AI is making companies more capital-efficient, why are founders still treating larger funding rounds as a competitive advantage? More capital isn't automatically more growth. It can also mean: → More pressure to deploy capital → Higher expectations → Larger teams than the business actually needs → Lower discipline around unit economics → A bigger valuation that eventually needs to be justified The best AI-native companies may not be the ones that raise the most. They may be the ones that turn $1 of capital into the most enterprise value. That's a very different definition of growth. And it puts a bigger burden on founders to understand their numbers—not just before fundraising, but before deciding what the next dollar should actually fund. Capital efficiency is becoming a competitive advantage again. #Startups #AI #VentureCapital #FP&A #FinancialStrategy

The Companies That Win Next Play By Different Rules AI is reshaping competition, making it easier and faster for businesses to build products, launch features and close technical gaps. This article argues that traditional advantages such as larger teams, bigger budgets and superior technology are becoming less durable, forcing businesses to rethink what truly creates long-term value. Rather than focusing solely on product development, the article highlights the importance of building advantages that become stronger over time. These include rapid learning cycles, proprietary data that improves with usage, trusted distribution channels, strong brand reputation and customer communities that generate referrals and loyalty. The main learning point is that future winners will not be the companies that build the fastest, but those that adapt the quickest and create advantages that competitors cannot easily replicate. In a world where technology is increasingly accessible, trust, relationships and the ability to respond to change may become the most valuable assets of all. #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #Innovation #AI #BusinessGrowth

The Companies That Win Next Play By Different Rules AI is reshaping competition, making it easier and faster for businesses to build products, launch features and close technical gaps. This article argues that traditional advantages such as larger teams, bigger budgets and superior technology are becoming less durable, forcing businesses to rethink what truly creates long-term value. Rather than focusing solely on product development, the article highlights the importance of building advantages that become stronger over time. These include rapid learning cycles, proprietary data that improves with usage, trusted distribution channels, strong brand reputation and customer communities that generate referrals and loyalty. The main learning point is that future winners will not be the companies that build the fastest, but those that adapt the quickest and create advantages that competitors cannot easily replicate. In a world where technology is increasingly accessible, trust, relationships and the ability to respond to change may become the most valuable assets of all. #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #Innovation #AI #BusinessGrowth

The Companies That Win Next Play By Different Rules AI is reshaping competition, making it easier and faster for businesses to build products, launch features and close technical gaps. This article argues that traditional advantages such as larger teams, bigger budgets and superior technology are becoming less durable, forcing businesses to rethink what truly creates long-term value. Rather than focusing solely on product development, the article highlights the importance of building advantages that become stronger over time. These include rapid learning cycles, proprietary data that improves with usage, trusted distribution channels, strong brand reputation and customer communities that generate referrals and loyalty. The main learning point is that future winners will not be the companies that build the fastest, but those that adapt the quickest and create advantages that competitors cannot easily replicate. In a world where technology is increasingly accessible, trust, relationships and the ability to respond to change may become the most valuable assets of all. #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #Innovation #AI #BusinessGrowth

The Companies That Win Next Play By Different Rules AI is reshaping competition, making it easier and faster for businesses to build products, launch features and close technical gaps. This article argues that traditional advantages such as larger teams, bigger budgets and superior technology are becoming less durable, forcing businesses to rethink what truly creates long-term value. Rather than focusing solely on product development, the article highlights the importance of building advantages that become stronger over time. These include rapid learning cycles, proprietary data that improves with usage, trusted distribution channels, strong brand reputation and customer communities that generate referrals and loyalty. The main learning point is that future winners will not be the companies that build the fastest, but those that adapt the quickest and create advantages that competitors cannot easily replicate. In a world where technology is increasingly accessible, trust, relationships and the ability to respond to change may become the most valuable assets of all. #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #Innovation #AI #BusinessGrowth