He spent 18 months funding an idea investors would not back. Afif Khoury’s long bet on local marketing now runs through SOCi’s AI agents, but the question has stayed remarkably practical: who does the work at every store?

At SOCi, revenue climbed from roughly $10 million to more than $100 million while Monica Ho stayed in the same chair. Her trick is to treat the chair as rented, keep changing the job, and make room for the intern with the better TikTok idea.