Shahed Islam

Tech Innovator & Mentor | Boost Your Business with AI Solutions | Leading NY’s Premier Digital Development Agency

At SJ Innovation LLC, my focus as Co-Founder & CEO has been on integrating AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, into business solutions that drive innovation and client success. With over two decades at the helm, our team's commitment to customer relations and agile project management ensures tailored strategies that align with client objectives.

As a Business Mentor at ManagedCoder, I empower agency owners with tools and insights pivotal for growth and scalability. Our collaborative approach has been key in creating valuable content and fostering a community dedicated to excellence in digital marketing and effective team management.

Co-Founder And CEO

As CEO and Co-Founder of SJ Innovation LLC, my role is multifaceted and dynamic. I actively manage business development, seeking new opportunities and partnerships with both Fortune 500 companies and promising start-ups.

I provide strategic leadership in our pursuit of AI technologies and solutions, with a special emphasis on ChatGPT. I am enthusiastic about fostering innovation within our team and continuously exploring potential applications of these technologies to benefit our clients.

I oversee our marketing team, devising and implementing strategies that effectively promote our company and its wide-ranging services. Part of this strategy involves advocating for the benefits of emerging technologies like OpenAI to our team members, clients, and my broader professional network.

In addition to this, I am committed to supporting the small business community. I understand the challenges they face with digital transformation, and I am dedicated to providing resources and guidance to help them navigate CRM implementation and digitalization.

As part of my role, I also cultivate and maintain our company culture and leadership. This includes mentoring members of our leadership team and ensuring our company remains competitive in a fast-evolving tech landscape.

I actively engage with the broader business community, sharing insights and learnings through webinars, podcasts, and speaking engagements. I firmly believe in continuous learning and upskilling to meet the ever-evolving demands of our clients and the industry.

Lastly, I manage the day-to-day operations and decision-making for the company. This includes overseeing our talented employees located in New York, Goa, Dhaka, and Sylhet.

Last night I sat in a room with founders who have been building for decades.

Tech. Roofing. Electric. Paving.
Different industries. Same story.


None of us started with investors.
We started with love for the work.
We started with clients who trusted us before we had a track record.

We started by figuring out how to make profit the old fashioned way.
That felt good to hear.

Because sometimes in the AI hype cycle you forget the basics still matter.
→ Deliver results
→ Love what you do
→ Make money doing it
The conversation eventually turned to AI.
Everyone wanted to know how others were using it.


Not the headlines. The real stuff.
What I learned is this.
The founders who struggled for years before success are the same ones asking the best AI questions now.

They are not chasing trends.
They are asking what actually works.
That is the entrepreneur mindset.

Patience first. Then execution.
Thank you to OffDeal  and Goldman Sachs  Sachs for bringing this group together.
Wonderful meeting Justin Schlacks, @Jacob Glassman, Varun Agarwal  Agarwal, and  Sarah McKenna  (Ransom) McKenna.
These are the rooms where real conversations happen.
#Entrepreneurship #AIAdoption #FounderLife #SmallBusiness #CollabAI

Co-Founder And CEO @ SJ Innovation LLC | Strategic leader in AI solutions

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Sometimes, it’s the younger generation that opens our eyes to what’s really going on.”

The other day, my daughter Sariyah Islam  caught me watching a video, and she said, “Baba, you know that’s AI-generated, right?” I was honestly surprised. I work with AI all the time, but here she was, pointing out subtle things that I just didn’t notice.

It made me realize that just like we figured out our own challenges, our kids are going to figure out theirs. We just need to trust them and also keep an open mind to learn from them. Sometimes the best insights come from those we least expect—even our own kids.
Photo : recent trip with my family

AI agents are not tools.
They are part of your workforce.

And like any workforce, they need goals.

Right now, many companies deploy agentic AI like software.
They expect ROI without management.

That is why 30 to 60 percent of AI spend produces no clear business outcome.

Unmanaged agents do not fail loudly.
They drain margin quietly.

Token usage grows fast when there are no stop rules.
Cost spikes come from logic no one owns.
And when leadership asks about ROI, answers are vague.

There are two ways leaders approach this.

Tool mindset.
Measure usage.
No owner.
No budget ceiling.
High activity. Low impact.

Employee mindset.
Measure outcomes.
Clear ownership.
Cost limits.
Lower usage. Higher return.

Every junior hire gets structure on day one.

A clear role.
Limited access.
Defined success.
Regular review.

The same structure reduces rework.
Cuts risk.
And surfaces problems earlier.

Good agent OKRs look boring.
That is why they work.

Reduce cycle time by 35 percent.
Maintain accuracy above 92 percent.
Escalate below confidence threshold.
Hard stop after fixed actions.
Daily cost ceiling.

If you cannot explain what success means for your AI agent,
you do not have an AI strategy.

You have unmanaged risk.

Are your AI agents employees with goals,
or interns wandering your systems?

#AgenticAI #AILeadership #CEO #EnterpriseAI #CollabAI CollabAI

Ai agents are junior employees not magic tools 

Your employees won’t be replaced by AI.

They’ll become supervisors of it.

Last week, a COO at a 120-person services firm told me something interesting.

“The tech works. The problem is my managers don’t know what to delegate to agents yet.”

That’s the real shift happening right now.

Google just dropped their 2026 AI Agent Trends Report.

The big change isn’t about better tools.

It’s about how work itself changes.

We’re moving from “instruction-based computing” to “intent-based computing.”

Employees stop executing tasks manually.

They start orchestrating agents that do the work.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

→ A marketing manager used to pull data, draft posts, watch competitors.
Now they direct a system of agents that handle each piece.

→ A finance team used to spend 42 hours responding to customer queries.
Now agents handle 80% of transactional decisions in near real-time.

→ A telecom company used to manually open tickets when networks failed.
Now agents detect issues, open tickets, and alert customers automatically.

The report says 52% of executives already have AI agents in production.

But only 23% are actually scaling them.

Most are still experimenting.

The bottleneck isn’t the technology.

It’s the workforce.

Google’s data shows 71% of organizations see revenue increase after investing in AI training.

The companies winning in 2026 aren’t the ones buying more tools.

They’re the ones teaching their teams to work alongside agents.

This is exactly what we build at CollabAI.

Custom AI solutions that fit your workflows and help your team lead, not just use, the technology.

The question isn’t “should we use AI?”

It’s “are our people ready to lead it?”

What’s stopping your team from making this shift?

#AIAdoption #CollabAI #FutureOfWork #MidSizeUSA #AIAgents​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ CollabAI

Culture is behavior when nobody asks you to do anything.
This week I saw it happen.
One of our managers joined a client success meeting he did not have to attend. He tested the portal. He found bugs. He asked the uncomfortable questions. He brought the best ideas in the room.
Nobody assigned him this. Nobody asked.
That is not process. That is culture.
After 21 years building companies, I learned this the hard way. You cannot slide deck your way into culture. You cannot policy your way into ownership.
It shows up in small moments. One meeting. One person stepping up when they did not have to.
Leaders, what was the last moment you saw culture show up on your team?
#Leadership #FounderStories #SJInnovation #FutureOfWork #USABusiness

Culture code

“AUTOMOBILES TURN CITY STREETS INTO DEATH TRAPS”
Newspaper headline. Early 1920s. USA.

That was the mood back then.

Cars were new.
Loud.
Fast.
Untrusted.

People hated them.

Pedestrians protested.
Newspapers blamed drivers.
Cities said cars were a mistake.

Then something interesting happened.

Car companies did not just make cars cheaper.
They changed the story.

→ They invented the word jaywalker
→ They blamed people, not machines
→ They used ads, schools, even Boy Scouts
→ They framed cars as progress
→ And resistance as backward thinking

It was messy.
It was controversial.
It worked.

Slowly, benefits showed up.

People traveled farther.
Businesses expanded.
Cities grew.
Life changed.

Now fast forward to AI.

I see the same pattern every week.

When I bring AI into companies, the first reaction is fear.
Not curiosity.

Employees focus on the 3 percent problem.
They miss the 97 percent help.

→ “What if it makes mistakes?”
→ “What if it replaces us?”
→ “What if it breaks something?”

Same fear.
Different decade.

AI today feels like cars in 1920.
Unpolished.
Disruptive.
Misunderstood.

Cars did not win because they were perfect.
They won because the upside was bigger than the fear.

AI is the same.

You can focus on the noise.
Or you can focus on where this is going.

The companies that accept the mess early
will shape the rules later.

That is the real lesson from Ford.

Curious.
When new tech hits your team, do you see fear first or opportunity first?

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