How Tomas Gorny Bootstrapped His Way Up. Now He’s Betting It All on AI.

AI is having a significant impact on every aspect of the business sphere. However, opinions are split on where exactly it may be leading businesses. 

Some see a fundamental transformation in the nature of business. Others see a massive security risk. 

While the future is impossible to predict, one way to brace for it is to learn from major disruptions of the past. Specifically, from the experience of entrepreneurs who not just survived them, but thrived.

Tomas Gorny is one of them. Today, he is co-founder and CEO of Nextiva, an AI customer experience company valued at $2.7 billion in its 2021 funding round. When he started bootstrapping his way to business success in the 1990s, though, he had no idea of the major challenges and transformations that lay ahead. 

Here’s how Gorny innovated through multiple cycles of disruptions, and why he’s betting on AI moving forward. 

From struggling immigrant to CEO of a billion-dollar company

Tomas Gorny’s business journey started in the 1980s, when he became irrevocably fascinated by the potential of digital technologies. Born in Poland, he took the first available opportunity to move to the US and start chasing the American Dream. 

Overcoming financial hardships through dogged determination, Gorny co-built Internet Communications, a web hosting company. It grew quickly and, when it was acquired two years later, made him a millionaire at 22.

Where other entrepreneurs’ success stories end, though, Gorny’s was about to take a turn. Keen to grow his net worth, he invested in a range of other companies. Then the dot-com crash hit, and Gorny was left with nothing but his car and a meager balance on his personal bank account. 

Learning from his past mistakes, Gorny started over. In 2001, he harnessed the competences he’d acquired and launched another web hosting startup, IPOWER. Thanks to Gorny’s dedication and leadership, it grew rapidly, merged with competitors, and was reportedly acquired for nearly $1 billion. 

It was at this point, in the mid-2000s, that Gorny’s interest in innovation coincided with significant shifts in the technology landscape. The future of customer experience management and communication, he knew already, lay in the cloud. 

That is why he founded Nextiva, which has continued to evolve through several major industry shifts over the past two decades. From the advent of smartphones and the transition to mobile-first experience to the dominance of unified customer experience management business models, Nextiva continued to grow. Now, Tomas Gorny is tackling AI. 

Innovating through cycles of disruption 

One pillar of the business philosophy that has helped Nextiva thrive through multiple cycles of disruption is Gorny’s willingness to innovate. 

Critically, though, Gorny does not pivot on a whim. Through his decades of experience in the business world, he has learned to pace transitions right. 

According to Gorny, businesses tend to overestimate the impacts of changes in the short run and underestimate them in the long run. One of the most frequent mistakes he sees is entrepreneurs racing to implement recent trends and get in line with developments, without laying the necessary groundwork first – then facing disillusionment. 

In Gorny’s experience, it takes five to seven years for the broader effects of these shifts to emerge. Throughout this period, businesses will sit on a spectrum from conservative to aggressive. 

To successfully incorporate the advantages of new technologies, businesses need to stay agile and to strategically align new offers with their core mission, delivering maximum value for their target customers. 

Expanding access to innovation and AI

This commitment to delivering value is what lies at the heart of Nextiva’s success. One of Tomas Gorny’s driving principles has been to broaden access to innovation. His goal? To make every business feel and operate like a Fortune 500 company. 

This includes tapping the massive potential of AI. While they are widely available, the implementation of thoughtful AI solutions needs skill, infrastructure and someone pulling all the pieces together so businesses never have to think about it.

That is exactly the service Nextiva aims to provide. 

In addition to its business communications and CX solutions, Nextiva now provides extensive AI functionalities in areas from analytics to autonomous AI agents. For example, XBert, Nextiva’s new AI employee for customer conversations, can understand intent, respond naturally and resolve issues independently. 

“We see an agentic future for businesses, where humans define outcomes and AI helps achieve them,” Gorny recently explained at the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, where he received a cross-industry entrepreneurship award. 

Over three decades after he launched his first business venture, Gorny has long achieved the American Dream. His drive to help Nextiva grow is born not of necessity, but of a genuine commitment to the businesses it serves. His mindset and experiences form a solid basis for Nextiva to weather future disruptions and to help its customers adapt to ongoing change.