Introducing AI for Main Street (AIM)
At four years old, I learned my first lessons about grit and hard work while sitting by the roadside in Cite Verte, a residential neighborhood in Yaoundé, Cameroon. I watched my PhD-educated father sell bananas on platters every day to make ends meet after losing his government job and facing eviction from our apartment. I learned early that nothing is handed to you. That grit carried me from humble beginnings to an education at some of the world's best institutions and into rooms I never imagined entering. I feel a deep debt to give back. As a builder and technologist, I've made it my mission to empower small businesses—because they remind me every day of the values of perseverance and hard work that shaped my journey. In my latest venture, I helped thousands of auto parts traders connect directly with manufacturers to keep their shelves stocked and their profits growing. Now, as we navigate one of history’s greatest inflection points—with AI transforming how we work, earn, and live—my mission is to ensure that this tide lifts every hardworking business on Main Street.
Today, the discourse around the future of AI is being shaped in the gleaming boardrooms of Silicon Valley, the towering offices of Wall Street, and the hallowed halls of elite academic institutions. Meanwhile, the heartbeat of our economy—family-run shops, corner stores, and local enterprises that form the backbone of our communities—remains largely unheard. Mainstream news and business media overly focuses on tech titans bickering over who is investing billions in shiny new data centers or hoarding H100s. Wall Street analysts obsess over whether the “Magnificent 7” are headed for a market Armageddon because a Chinese AI lab developed a frontier model with a budget of 6M USD instead of 100M USD.
It’s not that these high-profile stories aren’t important. But while tech elites flaunt models with trillions of parameters, expanding token limits, and agents that can commandeer your computer, there’s a nurse in a small clinic in Bryn Mawr, PA, still struggling to boot up her electronic health record and locate a doctor’s note. Similarly, a small tax accounting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, is bombarded weekly with pitches for revolutionary AI agents—even as 80% of its staff’s time is wasted on IT support, endless emails, and paperwork processing.
So, how do we continue to praise the marvels of these ever-evolving models when many small businesses are still grappling with basic tech challenges? How is AI supposed to help them run their operations better, faster, and cheaper? The answer begins with shifting the representation gap in the conversation and ensuring that the voices of small businesses—those driving nearly 45% of our GDP—are properly heard. If we don't act now, we'll continue to see solutions that assume access to resources many organizations simply don't have, overlook the realities of diverse business contexts, and miss critical use cases and requirements. The stakes are high; if we fail to act, we risk exacerbating a two-tier economy where AI benefits only large, tech-savvy organizations while leaving Main Street behind.
So I invite you to subscribe and join the conversation here on AI for Main Street (AIM). My goal is to offer a practical guide that empowers small businesses to harness AI effectively and grow. More importantly, AIM hopes to amplify Main Street's voice in the conversation on AI development and implementation, ensuring that the insights of everyday hardworking entrepreneurs are heard.