by Olivier Acuña Barba •Published: August 18, 2025•23:11•2 minutes read
He is the boss of Eric from Ignite Tech. Credit: Ignited Tech
Eric Vaughan, CEO of Enterprise-Software Powerhouse IgniteTech, said that, according to a Fortune article, he did not regret firing 80% of his staff within a year, as he was not on the vision that the generator AI was a “existent” transformation.
In the first quarter of 2023 and 2024, Vaughan said IgniteTech had replaced hundreds of employees. However, he refused to give him accurate numbers.
“That wasn’t our goal,” he told Fortune. “It was very difficult, but changing your mind was more difficult than adding skills.” It was a brutal calculation anyway, but Vaughn insists that it was necessary; I said Fortunately he will do it again. “In early 2023, we saw the light,” he said. “Now, I have certainly changed to believe this is all companies. I mean literally every company faces an existential threat from this transformation.” He said at the time he felt that all tech companies around the world were facing important inflection points regarding the adoption of artificial intelligence.
Vaughn saw the emergency
Vaughn saw the urgency as others saw the promise, Fortune said. “We give gifts to you, and that gift is a huge investment of time, tools, education and projects to give you new skills,” he explained. The company has launched AI tools refunds and rapid engineering classes, bringing outside experts to evangelize.
“Every Monday was called ‘Mondays,” Vaughn said in his mission to staff that he could only work with AI. “We couldn’t make a customer call. We couldn’t work on our budget. We had to work on AI projects alone.”
He said his mission is done all over the board, from workers to sales to marketing, from everyone at Ignite Tech. “We had to build that culture. That was the key.” He invested heavily in popular learning, but the employee resistance was even greater, and even sabotage failed.
One in three people have hampered the company
According to the 2025 Enterprise AI Recruitment Report by Writer, an AI platform that supports enterprise clients with AI integration, one in three said they “actively hampered” the company’s AI rollout. That number rises to four in 10 with millennials and Gen Z employees.
Vaughn says he doesn’t want to force anyone. “You can’t force people to change, especially if you don’t believe it,” he added that belief is what he needs to adopt. The company’s leadership has finally realized that it must launch a massive recruitment effort for what has become known as the “AI Innovation Specialist.”
In exchange for this complicated transformation, IgniteTech enjoyed extraordinary results. By the end of 2024, the company launched and fundamentally rebuilt two patent-pending AI solutions, including the platform for AI-based email automation (Eloquens AI).
In the end, it worked for him
Financially, IgniteTech remained strong. Vaughan said the company he said was in a nine-figure revenue range, ending in 2024 with “near 75% EBITDA”, all completed a massive acquisition.
“It gives people the ability to put themselves in and do things at a pace,” he said. Vaughn has no ambiguity. Will he do that again?
