What Makes a Perfect Business in 2026 (3 Things Most Founders Get Wrong)

Dan Bedford is the CEO of Connexion and Founder of Clio Dan Bedford is the CEO of Connexion and Founder of Clio, a messaging platform that unifies WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook into one automated workspace.

This week’s Visionary Voices sits down with Dan Bedford, founder of Clio, the messaging aggregation platform that wants to replace your chatbot with something customers actually want to use.

Companies are spending billions on AI chatbots. Customers hate them. That’s the tension Clio is built around.

“Businesses are doing it for efficiency for themselves and not efficiency for the customers,” Bedford told IBT. “Because evidently the customers don’t want to see that.”

Bedford has seen the horror stories firsthand. He points to one incident where a customer got a delivery company’s AI chatbot to write a poem about how terrible the company was at delivering packages on time. The screenshot went viral.

“My default when I end up communicating with a chatbot for customer support is to immediately ask if I can speak to a human agent,” he said. “Most of the time they just regurgitate the website’s FAQs back at you.”

Born From a Real Problem

Clio wasn’t born in a pitch deck. It came from Bedford’s mother’s business, which ran government-funded education courses in London. Facebook ads generated thousands of leads, but only one in ten actually qualified for enrollment. Salespeople were burning 90% of their time on calls that went nowhere.

Bedford built a WhatsApp-based workflow that automated the qualification process and pre-filled enrollment forms from chat data. No human interaction was needed until a lead was actually ready to convert. The result: 80% reduction in admin costs.

“People just love to have these back and forth conversations instead of filling in a lead form, getting an email in three days, and doing all that tedious stuff,” he said.

The AI Bubble Warning

Bedford is blunt about the broader AI landscape. He compares the current investment frenzy to the dot-com bubble and warns founders building on top of third-party APIs.

“If your product is entirely built on top of OpenAI’s API, then your whole business is reliant on that company. If they close their API, your product disappears. If they go out of business, your product disappears.”

His advice to young entrepreneurs: “Try not to get caught in these hype cycles. At some point, the money runs out. The crap will be weeded out.”

On AI replacing jobs, Bedford sees transformation rather than extinction. “I still don’t see too much of AI being able to just do things without oversight. The job becomes creative direction.”

Clio launched in January 2026 and is currently onboarding users through organic outreach, networking events, and a partner program offering up to 50% recurring commission on referrals.

About Dan Bedford

Dan Bedford is the CEO of Connexion and Founder of Clio. Previously at Google, he has a background in software development and the crypto industry. Clio unifies WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger into a single automated workspace for businesses. Based in the United Kingdom.