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After more than two decades building technology businesses across Australia’s property sector, Watts has founded several successful technology start-ups such as the fintech CampaignAgent.
Describing AI as “a trillion-dollar change to humanity”, Watts has spent the last few years developing AI tools and helping businesses understand and adopt the technology.
Ahead of his upcoming keynote at this year’s Business Innovation Summit, Watts said the challenge is no longer understanding AI’s potential but ensuring businesses can keep pace with a technology evolving faster than most organisations can absorb.
The intersection of tech and business
“There are technologists that are just building technology platforms as stand-alone entities, think Microsoft, Facebook and Instagram,” Watts explained.
“Then there are technologists who are working at the intersection of an industry and solving its problems.
“I was always that second guy.”
Watts’ career has largely followed that philosophy. Beginning as a programmer, he built technology solutions for Australia’s property sector before moving through marketing, finance, and proptech ventures.
Watts said he first realised the scale of AI’s potential in December 2022, shortly after the launch of ChatGPT 3.5.
“That was the iPhone moment,” he said.
“I had the exact same reaction when I saw ChatGPT. It was so obvious that this was a trillion-dollar change to humanity.”
While he had watched previous technology shifts unfold throughout his career, Watts said AI stood apart.
“There was a very deep conviction that day that has only gotten deeper ever since, that this was going to be the biggest technical shift of my lifetime,” Watts said.
“My lifetime has seen both the internet and mobile. And this is going to be vastly bigger than both.”
Following the sale of fintech platform CampaignAgent to REA Group in 2023, that conviction ultimately led Watts to launch Prepared in July 2025, applying AI to the conveyancing and property law sector.
The innovation-adoption gap
According to Watts, the biggest challenge facing brokers today is not access to AI but understanding how to use it effectively.
“I think there are enormous capabilities out there that are untapped by most businesses,” he said.
“I don’t think people understand how profound the nature of the change is and what’s available to them.”
However, Watts said he does not necessarily believe that this emerging gap between adoption and innovation means businesses are failing.
“You can invent the engine for a car, but until you build the body, the brakes, the transmission and everything around it, the engine is only ever going to give you a Model T,” he said.
“We have an engine called an LLM. What is happening in the tech community right now is they’re those car parts to make the whole thing work.”
According to Watts, those supporting tools and systems are only now beginning to emerge, allowing businesses to access the technology in more practical and commercially useful ways.
Adoption strategy
Importantly, Watts said that one key difference in the adoption strategy of AI compared to previous technology waves was that it no longer requires specialised technical knowledge to participate.
“AI is fundamentally driven by language,” he said.
“The programming language of AI is being able to communicate effectively in English.”
As a result, Watts said many business leaders underestimate their own ability to use the technology.
“It’s particularly well suited for older, wiser, more experienced executives – I find a lot of older, wiser users don’t think of themselves as being early adopters for technology,” Watts said.
“They have almost like a block in their own brain that’s like, ‘Oh my God, no, this is for the young people, not me.’”
Watts said that deep industry expertise often provides an advantage when working with AI.
“You know your job. You know your role. You know your business. You know your customers better than anybody in the world,” he said.
“You are unique, and applying your knowledge and using AI to help solve those problems – there is no possible way that will not help you, your business, as well as your competitive advantage.”
Compliance and caution
While Watts was certain of AI’s potential, he also warned businesses against overlooking governance and compliance obligations.
“You need to be on some kind of corporate plan, because until you are paying for it and until you’re on a corporate plan, you are not compliant with Australian legislation,” he said.
Watts encouraged organisations to begin experimenting with AI through low-risk administrative tasks before gradually expanding its use across the business.
At the same time, he said that in some parts of a business, users can actually overestimate what AI can reliably do.
According to Watts, problems arise when businesses attempt to use AI for tasks requiring deterministic accuracy rather than judgement, analysis, or language-based work.
“It’s essentially a stochastic random engine that produces answers that are designed to please you,” Watts said.
“What we find is that people get these answers and they start to use a random engine for deterministic problems.”
While AI can be highly effective at synthesising information, drafting content, and accelerating workflows, Watts warned that businesses should understand where human oversight remains essential.
Business Innovation Summit returns
At Business Innovation Summit 2026, Watts will challenge attendees to rethink their approach to AI, exploring why adoption is lagging behind innovation and what businesses can do to turn AI from a talking point into a genuine competitive advantage.
Hosted by Broker Daily, the Summit will bring together some of the industry’s leading thinkers to examine the technologies, strategies, and trends set to define the next era of broking.
For more information, including speakers and agenda details, click here.
[Related: Why AI in broking needs a rethink]
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