Entrepreneur Jeff Knauss on leadership: Help others win and you win, too

Source: https://www.syracuse.com/business/2026/03/entrepreneur-jeff-knauss-on-leadership-help-others-win-and-you-win-too.html

By Marie Morelli | Syracuse.com / The Post-Standard Published: Mar. 18, 2026

Jeff Knauss has a knack for seeing where a business is going. He quotes the hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been."

Knauss (pronounced kuh-NOWSE) predicts that artificial intelligence will revolutionize "not just the way we work, but the way we live, the way we think, the way we operate, the value that humans bring to society."

He is a co-founder with Jake Tanner of Arcovo AI, an artificial intelligence startup headquartered in the INSPYRE Innovation Hub by CenterState, 235 Harrison St. Arcovo has built more than 300 AI "employees" to handle mundane administrative tasks for more than 100 clients.

"It allows for humans to no longer have to do work that computers are better at and humans don't like to do anyway," Knauss says. That frees up time for people to do things only humans can do, like build relationships and grow the business.

Knauss anticipates Arcovo AI will grow by a factor of 30 this year. The company has 17 human employees, in addition to its AI agents.

Knauss grew up poor in rural Phelps, New York. His adoptive parents, Jim and Darlene Knauss, worked hard at jobs they didn't love. Knauss was determined to make enough money to retire by 35. After graduating from SUNY Oswego with a communications degree, Knauss sold ads for TV stations in Rochester and Syracuse. He met Tanner at the Tech Garden and, in 2014, they decided to start a digital marketing company to ride the social media wave.

By 2018, Digital Hyve was ranked No. 52 on the Inc. 5,000 list of fastest-growing private companies. In 2021, the founders sold the company to an employee-owned Rochester advertising agency, making its own employees owners, too.

Knauss had achieved early retirement. He spent three weeks in his wife's native Finland … and had a total meltdown. "I realized I'm not built to sit around. I'm built to build things," he says. Knauss helped to start several restaurants in Skaneateles before he and Tanner created Arcovo AI.

Knauss, 40, lives in Skaneateles with his wife, Heta, and their children, Max, 11, and Lila, 8. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you have leadership roles growing up?

When I was in sports, I always wanted to be the captain of the team, even if I wasn't the most skilled. I always thought if I work the hardest and I'm the best example, then maybe that allowed me to be a leader on the team.

I think [my drive] comes from being adopted. I've done a lot of research on people who have been adopted — Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, high-functioning people who have found some success in the world. I categorize people who have been adopted in two ways. They feel like they've been discarded, and so their whole lives, they're trying to prove something. And then there's another set of people that I find myself more [aligned with]: I feel like I was chosen. I was adopted from South Korea, from a very bad situation, when I was three months old. If I had stayed there, my life obviously would be very different, but likely in a much worse way.

I was given this great opportunity to live in America, which I love, and given all these amazing opportunities. That had nothing to do with me. It just happened to me. I feel like I was chosen by these two lovely, amazing people who taught me all the values and hard work and all the stuff that I have inside of me, all by luck. Because I was chosen, I need to live up to that. I need to live up to the opportunity that was given to me, and I carry with that with me every day.

What do you wish you'd known about running a company before you ran a company?

I had no entrepreneurial mentorship growing up. It was really a leap of faith. I'm very fortunate to have found Jake Tanner, who's my business partner, both at Digital Hyve but also this new AI business. He's an entrepreneur at heart. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met.

There are so many things that I would want to know prior to starting a business. … [But] so much of the joy of entrepreneurship is in the learning.

A lot of people start a company because they want to be their own boss. When you start a company, it's not that you're everyone's boss; everyone is your boss. Your employees, your clients, your community. They are the ones who will dictate your success. … If you don't have a service mindset, you're not going to get very far.

If you start your own business because you don't want to work 9 to 5 anymore, well, congratulations. You work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You've said that you get restless after the startup phase is over. Why is that?

Everyone has different things that motivate them, that light them up and excite them. The most exciting bits for me in a business are figuring out all the big challenges, the things that have not been solved. There's this really exciting moment where you hit product market fit. You've solved the problem that people are willing to pay for in a business.

The next stage is: How do we solve it for a thousand businesses? How do we solve it with 500 employees? … Once it gets to the point where it's moving the ship 2% this way, I just don't know that that lights my brain up in the same way.

The exciting thing with AI is that it's going to completely revolutionize the way we think about business, in general. I have to think that reinvention will happen in perpetuity with business because the technology is changing so fast. Every day is Day One.

Arcovo AI helps small to medium-sized businesses create "AI employees." How is that not everyone's worst nightmare about AI?

I have an 8- and 11-year-old and I truly believe that AI is going to change not just the way we work, but the way we live, the way we think, the way we operate, the value that humans bring to society.

We've never had the ability to have a supplemental intelligence running alongside of us that is as smart as the smartest scientist, the smartest business person, the smartest doctor, whatever. We now have this ability to tap into a resource like that. And when the AI can do things, that really takes it to the next level.

Just like artificial intelligence is simulation of human intelligence in machines, our AI employees are simulation and execution of human administrative work in machines.

The reason that it's not everyone's nightmare, and actually can be the opposite, is that what we're doing is not replacing humans. Across the board, employees of the companies that have hired us are saying that they have a higher job satisfaction rate. In general, when AI is implemented the right way, it allows for humans to no longer have to do work that computers are better at and humans don't like to do anyway. …

AI allows … humans to lean into things that humans are really good at and get rid of all this repetitive, mundane tasks, like data entry and project management, creating proposals, doing invoicing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, client onboarding, employee training. Let's let AI do that and let's give ourselves more time to build human connections.

AI will never be able to build a human-to-human connection the way that we can. It'll never be able to make the final decisions for everything because it doesn't have the full context. We can't train a model to understand my 40 years of experience on this Earth.

Do you consider yourself a visionary?

I would never give myself that title because that's a lot of hubris right there. Everyone's a visionary. Everyone has a vision for what they want out of life.

One of the most important things about being an entrepreneur is self-awareness. When you're good at something, lean all the way into it. Do it all the time. When you're not good at something, lean all the way out and find people who are. Surround yourself with those people and then give them the trust and the ability to do their thing very well.

One thing that I'm good at is being able to look into the future and say, where is this thing moving? You know, Wayne Gretzky said, "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been." I have the ability to say this is where this industry is going, this is where business is going, this is where the macro trend of what people want is going to. And then I also have the ability to execute with a focused and intense effort toward bringing that thing to the world.

Do you have a theory of leadership?

In the beginning, you're going to suck at it. There are natural born leaders. I've been fortunate to work with many of them. Until you become a leader, you have to work through things.

I was awful in the beginning. I was a terrible manager. To this day, I'm still a bad manager, but I think I'm a decent leader. The differentiator is that I'm not really good at taking somebody that's a C to a B to an A because that takes a lot of hand-holding, crafting and molding. I just don't know that I'm really good at that. But I think I'm a good leader in [that] I can set a vision, I can get people excited about the vision, I can get people rowing in the same direction. A lot of that comes from my innate, deep desire to serve other people. I have no interest in being the guy at the top of the mountain and everyone's looking up at him.

As a leader, your job is to find the right people, give them the tools, give them the resources, give them the training to do their work, and then get out of their way. And tell them if there's anything they need, I'm here.

What's the best piece of advice that a parent, a mentor or a boss ever gave you?

I have a really wonderful coach based out of Australia. One of the biggest lessons she taught me was that Digital Hyve was all about survival. I started that company because I wanted to escape what we have now deemed the poverty monster. I didn't want to go back to the life that I lived as a kid. So, I worked really, really hard to build this company. And it was make or break. If that company succeeded, then I would live the life I wanted to live. And if it didn't, I would have to go back on the streets. For me, it was a dichotomy. All my motivation was running away from the poverty monster. I have to work all the time. I was constantly stressed, burnt out, ridden with anxiety.

She taught me how to get through that. If the business didn't work out, I still had the skills, I still had the relationships, I still had the abilities.

She's now taught me to reframe my motivation. Instead of running away from something, how much more fulfilling is it to run toward something? Now I am running toward Arcovo AI. I am running toward the things that I want in my life. The excitement that I wake up feeling every single day … I don't want to go to sleep because I'm so happy. I have way more in the tank to be able to get to my goals because my motivation shifted from running away from the poverty monster to running toward the things I want.

What advice would you give for effective leadership for somebody who's new to it, or aspiring to be a leader?

Give yourself grace. Understand that you're not going to be great in the beginning.

Start by serving others. If you provide more value to others than you could possibly get back in return, you will have an abundant life. So many people think of life as transactional. If I do this thing for you, I expect something back.

A guiding principle in leadership is: How do you help other people win? Because eventually you'll win, too. You just can't expect it in a transactional, immediate way.

What career advice would you give a young person starting out now?

Learn everything you can about AI. Before the digital revolution, the way that you rose on the corporate ladder was to put your time in. … There's never been a better opportunity for young people to sit at a boardroom table because they have expertise and a digital nativeness that the executives in the room won't have.

A lot of young people are rejecting AI but it's not going away. You're not putting that genie back in the bottle. So, embrace it. …You're going to be able to bring something to a workplace other people won't. That's how you're going to win in your career.

You could live anywhere. Your wife is from Finland. Why do you stay in Central New York?

We had planned on moving back to Finland whenever we were financially secure enough to do that. My wife has a big family and my parents have both passed. Our agreement was: If you move here in the beginning of our life, we will end it in Finland. I was still committed to doing that. But my wife really, truly loves it here. And she made the decision. We live in Skaneateles. It's the most beautiful town. I love the lake, we love the people, we love the schooling system for our kids. We live an incredible life and Central New York has so much to offer — the richness of the region, the seasons. People complain about the snow, but you can't enjoy a warm, 80-degree day if you haven't lived through a Central New York winter. It's just not the same.

The community has been so wonderful and has so embraced me and my endeavors. I'm a lifelonger. I just love it here … I expect so much out of this region. There's so much happening right now, there's so much incredible opportunity that I'm excited to be a part of it.

If I gave you a magic wand, what's the one thing you would change about Syracuse?

Mindset. I don't think enough people share my optimism around Central New York. Many people, rightfully, are stuck in the '70s and the manufacturing days of old. We were promised this and it didn't happen. … Look, change happens. I can't affect the past. No one can. All I can do is make change today. So, what's the point about complaining about what used to be and being pessimistic? I'm so much of a pragmatist that I've come to the conclusion that being an optimist is the most pragmatic thing to be.