Jeff Torello, Founder & CTO, Sinjun AI.
Little David and his humble slingshot felled the giant Goliath. And, so we are told, the latest wave of technology will level the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Everyone loves a good underdog story. But in business, the “David and Goliath” metaphor rarely lives up to its promise. Whatever leverage technology may offer to smaller organizations, they still lack the financial resources to hire at an enterprise scale. SMBs must therefore be highly selective in the roles that they create and the initiatives that they pursue.
That’s why agentic AI is such a game changer for SMBs. If previous technology tools were “slingshots” that helped extend our proverbial David’s power and reach, then agentic AI is an unlimited army of Davids, each a tireless expert in the art of hurling stone projectiles. Agentic AI will alter everything about how our economy functions. And I promise you—this really can be a game changer for the SMBs who learn how to use it.
Agentic AI is not just a new tool; it is a new economy.
First, understand the difference between AI agents and agentic AI. AI agents are capable of taking discrete actions such as booking a flight or writing a sales letter. They are analogous to the very first smartphone apps—interesting, but not quite the stuff needed to vanquish fearsome Philistines.
The real economic revolution comes to us courtesy of agentic AI, wherein multiple agents work together to plan sequences of action, adapt to feedback and operate persistently over time, with minimal supervision by their human handlers.
Rather than simply writing a sales letter, for example, one AI agent conducts market research and identifies sales niches, another continuously generates and segments leads, another composes customized outreach letters and still another books calls, produces proposals and schedules follow-ups. A master agent can even change product, pricing or communication strategy in response to market feedback and write reports for higher-ups to share at the latest board meeting.
With agentic AI, the human resources gap shrinks dramatically.
Instead of hiring individual human experts for each role, an SMB can let an agentic AI system run the firm’s strategic playbooks, using the firm’s own proprietary data. Consider these scenarios:
• An independent retailer customizes an agentic commerce system based on past transactions and browsing data. While one AI agent analyzes purchase trends and abandoned carts, another monitors competitor pricing and a third writes personalized offers and tests dynamic pricing. Together, they fine-tune inventory levels, forecast demand and determine promotional strategy.
• A small manufacturer gives agentic AI access to its ERP, equipment sensor feeds and purchase and sales records. While one sub-agent forecasts raw material needs, another negotiates purchase orders, another writes bids for government tenders and still another analyzes downtime and delivery patterns. Over time, this helps the small maker grow competitively, productively and profitably.
• A local legal firm trains agentic AI on past cases and billing reports. While one agent analyzes briefs and summarizes key information, another searches case law and suggests possible strategies, while a third helps draft arguments and produce exhibits. The firm’s proprietary document corpus becomes a competitive institutional memory bank.
In the same way that niche-specific enterprise software suites emerged in the 1990s and their SaaS and mobile-first equivalents in the mid-2000s and 2010s, startups are now rushing to provide turnkey agentic business solutions. We may even see an online marketplace of specialized AI agents trained for every imaginable niche and business function—a kind of “Upwork” or “Fiverr” for agentic AI.
Collectively, this application layer will construct an agentic economy to surpass the creator economy, sharing economy, gig economy and Web3 economies of previous technology waves.
The agentic opportunity won’t last long.
It took decades for digital transformation to render old-world business models obsolete. The shift from our current-day knowledge work paradigm to the agentic economy will not be that forgiving.
SMBs have a historic opportunity to leverage this opportunity, but not for long. SMBs do not need a team of developers to make all of this happen, but to fully leverage agentic AI, SMBs still must adapt it to their data and use cases. Here’s how I advise clients to begin:
1. Commit to the agentic economy. You need a senior-level AI champion whose role is to drive this transformation and manage the coming cultural shift. This is not a job for a middle manager or “the techie guy “—this should be a board-level priority. It is better to choose someone who has the charisma and internal influence to drive this change than to simply give it to whoever understands how computers work.
2. Prioritize your use cases. What are the most impactful and accessible applications in your organization? Where can you get the biggest bang for your buck? Decide and commit to this before you call any consultant or start any pilot. I have seen highly promising projects die in that “trough of disillusionment” when companies didn’t really think about where the early wins and results would justify further investment.
3. Get your data in order. Inconsistent data labeling, missing or obsolete data fields, outdated policies and other data irregularities will sink your ship before it ever hits the water. But once you have prioritized your use cases, it will be much easier to select the data you need to clean, organize and vet before training your AI agents.
The arrival of the agentic economy represents a watershed opportunity for small and medium-sized business Davids to level the playing field with large enterprise Goliaths. But this once-in-a-generation transformation will ride an adoption curve that is much steeper and faster than that of previous waves.
To anchor their advantage, SMBs must have the faith and conviction of the legendary David and begin experimenting and adapting today, rather than trying to play catch-up once the agentic economy has fully arrived.
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