Back to the Future of AI – Ep. 34: Felix Schlenther (AI FIRST)
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In this episode of "Back to the Future of AI," Alexander Thamm speaks with Felix Schlenther, founder of AI FIRST.
The discussion focuses on how companies can leverage AI—from initial productivity gains to comprehensive process automation. Felix explains why successful AI transformation requires, above all, clear processes, accessible data, empowered employees, and a strong mandate from senior management. He also provides insights into his agent-based AI operating system and demonstrates why it is often the organization itself—rather than the technology—that becomes the decisive bottleneck.
Back to the Future of AI | Ep. 34 | Felix Schlenther
In this episode of Back to the Future of AI, Alexander Thamm speaks with Felix Schlenther about his journey from Berlin’s software and startup ecosystem to becoming an entrepreneur and AI enablement expert. Felix explains how he began using generative AI systematically while managing the turnaround of an insolvent software company, with the goal of maintaining productivity and revenue despite operating with a significantly smaller team.
He describes how LLMs and early AI tools were introduced across customer support, sales, marketing, software engineering and product development. The experience demonstrated that AI can do more than accelerate individual tasks: it can enable people to take on greater responsibility and amplify the impact of their existing knowledge and capabilities.
A major focus of the discussion is how mid-sized companies can successfully introduce AI across their organizations. Felix outlines a multi-stage approach that begins with helping employees use AI for individual productivity. Decentralized teams can then implement smaller use cases before more complex processes are systematically analysed, redesigned and automated with support from specialized data and AI teams.
He emphasizes that successful AI transformation depends less on individual models or short-lived technology trends than on clearly documented processes, accessible data and a well-connected system landscape. Leadership is equally important: executives must use AI themselves, define clear objectives and give responsible AI leaders the mandate required to drive meaningful organizational change.
Felix also provides insights into his company’s own AI operating system. Rather than creating isolated agents with fixed identities and roles, he sees AI agents as a flexible execution layer that can access processes, data, governance rules and business systems. Overall, the conversation shows that the technology is already capable of delivering productive value – the main bottleneck is now the organization’s ability to adopt it pragmatically and consistently.
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Spoken language: German
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