Ben Perreau is a former journalist, founder and CEO of Parafoil — a leadership intelligence tool that uses real meeting transcripts to help managers understand how they’re actually leading, not how they think they are. He started his career in newsrooms during the shift from analog to digital, then built startups in music tech before landing here.
In this conversation, Tom and Ben explore:
Why journalism taught him to separate stories from evidence — and why that skill now matters more than ever
How most LLMs push you toward the median when leaders need to be differentiated
The risk of AI becoming a crutch that atrophies skill rather than building it
Why chatbots are incentivised to always give you something, even when nothing was needed
Who gets to define the “better version” of a leader that a tool optimises toward
Why he thinks chat interfaces are like drinking your whole meal through a straw
His contrarian take: this is actually the best time in decades to start building things yourself
Ben also shares why he named his company Applied Humanity, how Parafoil avoids the surveillance trap by keeping data private to the individual, and why liberal arts degrees still matter.
If you’re thinking about how AI is reshaping management, wondering whether these tools make us sharper or just smoother, or building anything that touches how people work together — this one gets into it.
Links
Parafoil: A leadership intelligence platform that turns real conversations into insight, helping managers improve through evidence rather than heuristics.
Ben Perreau: Founder and CEO of Parafoil (Applied Humanity, Inc.). Former journalist and radio presenter, with a background spanning BBC, NME, Sky Television, and music tech startups Synkio and Gigulate.
Thomas Horak is the founder of All Shapes, a design and product studio working with founders, scale-ups and innovative enterprises to build meaningful digital tools that last. All Shapes blends craft, culture and human clarity — helping teams move from early concepts to high-performing, values-aligned experiences.
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