Media release
Tech veteran announces practical guide on how to put AI to work
Vertical AI: Changing the Game by Clive Mayhew. Forthcoming from Dean Publishing.
Clive Mayhew: fast facts
- More than 30 years in technology, spanning the commercial internet, ecommerce, cloud software and online learning.
- Led Netscape’s Australasian business during the early web era and held a senior role at ecommerce pioneer CDNOW.
- Investor and former Chair of Sky Software, acquired by Tribal Group in 2014.
- Early investor and former Chair of OpenLearning, which listed on the ASX in December 2019.
- Served a three-year term as Chair of startup community Fishburners.
- Co-founder and CEO of GOLF.AI, applying industry knowledge and AI to golf enquiries and booking workflows.
- Author of Vertical AI: Changing the Game, a 12-chapter book with an FDE Playbook in every chapter.
A practical starting point for AI
Former managing director of Netscape Australasia Clive Mayhew has announced his forthcoming practical guide to how businesses can turn everyday customer friction into useful AI workflows.
The tech entrepreneur and GOLF.AI co-founder Clive Mayhew believes his book Vertical AI: Changing the Game will be a practical guide for founders, CEOs and business owners who know AI matters but need a clearer place to start.
Drawing on more than 30 years in technology, from helping commercialise the early web at Netscape to building AI services for golf businesses, Mayhew argues that the next opportunity sits in work leaders already understand: the requests customers make and the effort employees spend fulfilling them.
“The lesson I carry from the internet era is to take the change seriously early, while staying very practical about the customer problem,” Mayhew says.
The book opens with his “Pro Shop Moment”. A golfer calls to arrange a round while another waits at the counter. What sounds like a simple request can send a staff member between booking software, equipment records and club rules. The employee makes it work, but the time and interruptions rarely appear on a management report.
Mayhew sees the same pattern in hotel reception, appointment booking and client enquiries. Experienced people keep service moving by remembering exceptions and joining systems together. Observing that work, he says, gives a business a concrete starting point for AI.
Vertical AI applies AI to the knowledge, rules and workflows of a particular industry. With the necessary connections and permissions, it can help carry a request through to a completed result, such as a confirmed reservation, while bringing in a person when judgement is required.
The challenge is already visible in Australian business. MYOB research published in May 2026 found 81 per cent of surveyed mid-market leaders reported a positive productivity impact from AI, while gaps in skills, governance and system integration limited its full potential. Read the MYOB research.
Mayhew says leaders need to understand the customer journey before choosing technology. “Buying an AI tool before understanding that can simply add another place for the request to get stuck,” he says.
Each of the book’s 12 chapters includes an FDE Playbook, named for the Forward Deployed Engineer role. An FDE works close to the operation, translates a business problem into a workable technical solution and tests it against the conditions staff and customers actually face.
The playbooks bring that field perspective to the reader. They begin with the Front Door Audit: 90 minutes observing where customer requests arrive, whether through reception, a phone line or an inbox. Later exercises develop the workflow design, information and memory it needs, human responsibilities and the checks that establish whether the work has been completed correctly.
Readers can carry one real workflow through the book and build a plan for testing it. Leaders do not need to become engineers, but they do need to understand the work and involve the technical expertise needed to implement it.
“I want the leader to know what a successful outcome looks like first,” Mayhew says.
Vertical AI: Changing the Game is forthcoming from Dean Publishing. Book information and requests for the free first chapter are available at clive.ai.
Media enquiries
Email Kristy@clive.ai for interviews and book enquiries.