Speaking
From the NFL League Office to Your Back Office
A Sober View of AI for Owner-Led Businesses
Alex Francois spent nearly a decade at the NFL, most recently as Director of Business Strategy. Today he builds AI systems that do real operational work for owner-led businesses. This talk cuts through the hype: what AI can do right now, where it still fails, and how to capture it without an enterprise budget.
Most owner-led businesses are stuck at the first level of AI: a few employees using ChatGPT, some faster emails, and a vague sense that competitors are doing more. Meanwhile the headlines swing between "AI will replace everyone" and "it's all hype."
Alex Francois, former Director of Business Strategy at the NFL, offers the sober version. Drawing on the league office, where he learned that fixing the process comes before any technology, and on his firm's work building AI agents that process invoices and run research for family offices and investment firms, he lays out three levels of AI adoption and what separates them. He'll show where AI is now reliable enough to trust with real work, the one discipline that makes it safe (run it alongside the old process until it earns the switch), and why a 50-person company can move faster here than a Fortune 500.
Attendees leave with a one-page worksheet to identify the single process in their business most worth handing to AI first.
- 30-minute keynote
- 45-minute talk plus Q&A
- 90-minute working session with worksheet
- 01
The three levels, and where they are today.
Level 1: people using chat tools. Level 2: builders shipping software faster with coding agents. Level 3: agents doing the business's operational work. Most firms are at level 1 and think level 3 needs a data-science team. It doesn't.
- 02
What changed in the last year.
Why "never let AI touch the books" was right in 2025, and why it's no longer the full answer. Finance workflows like invoice processing are now automatable, with the right controls.
- 03
The discipline that makes it safe.
Test against your own history. Run it in parallel with the manual process. Switch over only after it's proven itself. It's the same risk logic an owner applies to a new hire.
- 04
The owner-led advantage.
One decision-maker, one process owner, no committee. The firms that win this aren't the biggest; they're the ones that pick one process and start.
- 05
A worksheet:
score your five most time-consuming processes by volume, how rules-based they are, and the cost of an error, and leave with your first candidate.
What Your Owner-Clients Are About to Ask You About AI
The same three levels, reframed around the advisor's two jobs: (1) answering clients who ask "what should we do about AI?", and (2) the advisor's own firm. It adds a segment on controls, audit trail and data residency, which is what CPAs and attorneys will be asked about first.
Alex Francois is the founder of Falcon View Group, an Atlanta-based firm that builds AI systems for owner-led businesses and family offices. Previously he was Director of Business Strategy at the NFL, where he led long-range planning for the league's flag football push. Before that, he was the first hire on a global professional esports league at Riot Games. He holds a JD.
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