Why I started simplefy.ai

Written by: Ashleigh Greaves, CEO, simplefy.ai

Why I started simplefy

I was 17 when I found out I was dyslexic.

By then, I'd already built workarounds I didn't have names for.

Speech-to-text to get my ideas out. Text-to-speech to absorb textbooks. AI-powered tools that let me participate in a system that wasn't built for the way my brain works.

I didn't know I was an early adopter of AI.

I just knew these tools worked and that without them, I wouldn't have made it through Year 12.

That thread followed me into my career. My first job out of university was at JP Morgan, working with quantitative and systematic hedge funds some of the earliest institutional adopters of AI and machine learning.

Many of my clients never manually placed a trade. Algorithms decided what to buy, when, and why. I worked daily alongside AI and machine learning PhDs, learning how these systems executed, how they were governed, and how a global bank built services around them.

AI wasn't theoretical to me from the start. It was operational & real.

So when the broader conversation started shifting and when AI moved from specialist data technology to something accessible, that every business was expected to navigate — I paid attention differently to most.

What I saw coming

Australia has 2.73 million active businesses.¹

Of those, 97.3% are small businesses.² They employ more than 5 million Australians 39% of our entire private sector workforce and contribute nearly $590 billion to our GDP, close to one-third of the total economy.³

These businesses are not a niche. They are the backbone of how this country functions.

And they were about to face a technology transition unlike anything before it.

We've seen this pattern play out with cloud. SMBs were slower to adopt, later to benefit, and disproportionately exposed when they were left behind.⁴

The OECD has documented the same cycle repeating with AI and notes the gap is even larger this time: SMBs were half as likely as large firms to adopt cloud, but less than one-third as likely to adopt AI.⁵

AI is that story again but even harder. Because AI isn't just a technology shift. It's a behavioural one. It requires genuine change management, workforce transformation, and real strategic thinking to get right. It demands time, attention, and investment that most small businesses don't have to spare.

Today, only 29-41% of Australian SMBs have adopted any form of AI, compared to effectively all large enterprises.⁶

If just one in ten SMBs moved a single step up the AI maturity ladder, it could add $44 billion to Australia's GDP annually.⁷ That's the upside.

The downside risk of AI: cybercrime is already costing Australian small businesses an average of $56,600 per incident up 14% in a single year.⁸ And AI is now being used to make those attacks more convincing and harder to detect. Unsecured & ungoverned AI adoption isn't a neutral choice. It is a risk.

I saw what was coming: an enormous opportunity and a serious threat, arriving together, landing hardest on the businesses that are least equipped to respond.

I couldn't just sit on my hands and watch this go by.

Why this, why now

Business has always been at the centre of my family.

Growing up, dinner table conversation was the market, the economy, what was shifting and why. When I saw the AI wave forming, I had a choice: watch it arrive, or get ahead of it and help.

I started simplefy because I wanted to be part of a solution. Not just for businesses that could afford Deloitte-but for the other 97% that can't.

What we do

simplefy.ai helps small and medium-sized businesses understand, adopt, and implement AI safely, strategically, and with tangible outcomes. We work across four areas:

AI Education: board briefings, executive sessions, and hands-on build days where teams learn by doing
AI Strategy & Governance: risk mapping, policy design, use-case prioritisation, and compliance aligned to the Australian regulatory environment
Proof of Concepts & Implementation: targeted workflow builds, embedded agents, and automation that solves real business problems
Fractional Head of AI: ongoing AI leadership for businesses that need strategic oversight without a full-time hire: roadmap ownership, vendor evaluation, internal enablement, and governance that holds

We are also the sole delivery partner for the South Australian AI Capability Pilot Program.

We are not here to build AI for AI's sake. We are here to understand your business problem, help you make the right decisions, and make sure AI works for your people not just your processes.

Reference Sources

ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, 2024-25
ASBFEO Small Business Data Portal, June 2025
ASBFEO Contribution to Australian Employment & GDP, 2023-24
CloudTech SMB Cloud Adoption Trends, 2025
OECD, "AI Adoption by Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises," December 2025
MYOB Bi-Annual Business Monitor (29%), November 2025; Department of Industry AI Adoption Tracker (41%), Q1 2025
Deloitte Access Economics / Amazon, "The AI Edge for Small Business," November 2025
ASD Annual Cyber Threat Report, 2024-25