Sometimes I forget that we launched ITEXPO in 1999. That was before the internet bubble burst. Before “tech conference” was even a very familiar phrase. Next week, it will be 27 years.

That number still catches me off guard.

Back then, the thesis was simple, almost naive by today’s standards. IP communications would change how people worked. Geography would matter less. Technology would make it possible to build companies without being tied to a single place. A lot of people told us that would never happen.

We’ve heard that line before.

What followed was not one clean wave of innovation, but several smaller ones. Three mini IP communications bubbles came and went. The worst hit at the end of 2000. The market froze. Capital disappeared. Momentum stalled. For a while, it felt like the entire category had gone quiet.

Then around 2004, something shifted. Vonage showed that people would actually pay for residential VoIP. That mattered more than any whitepaper or keynote. It proved demand. Credit where it’s due, that moment didn’t happen in isolation. It was part of a broader ecosystem shaped by people like Jeff Pulver and Jeffrey Citron, who pushed the conversation forward long before it was fashionable.

Once that proof point existed, the floodgates opened.

Suddenly everyone wanted in. Belkin had a VoIP service. AT&T had one. New providers appeared almost overnight. The energy was back. The industry felt alive again. You could sense that something durable was forming, even if no one could quite define it yet.

And then 2008 happened.

The financial crisis didn’t just slow things down, it forced a reset. Companies pulled back. Buyers hesitated. Investment decisions became conservative. We weathered it, but as an industry, IP communications still never quite gained the traction many of us believed it deserved. The technology worked. The value was there. Adoption lagged anyway.

That gap between capability and acceptance is a recurring theme in tech.

Over time, ITEXPO evolved. We expanded beyond VoIP. We brought in broader technology, then cloud, cybersecurity and then AI. But the original idea from 1999 never really changed. Technology should let people work from anywhere. Build from anywhere. Live where they want, not where the office demands.

For decades, that idea was dismissed.

Until it wasn’t.

When the world shut down in 2020, IP communications became the backbone of everyday life. Not theory. Not roadmap slides. Real systems carrying real work. The companies that built and maintained those platforms allowed millions of people to keep earning a living while isolated. The shift happened fast, but the groundwork had been laid over decades.

That’s usually how disruption works.

So what’s next?

To me, the answer is straightforward, even if the implications are not. AI gets smarter. Not incrementally smarter, but meaningfully better at reasoning, acting, and operating without constant supervision. At the same time, cybersecurity stops being a defensive afterthought and turns into an active battlefield. Companies will need white-hat AI to defend against AI-driven threats. Humans alone won’t be enough.

Think less about tools and more about outcomes.

The future isn’t another dashboard. It’s autonomous systems that do things end-to-end. Agent-like experiences that monitor, decide, and act continuously. Moltbot-style solutions are an early glimpse of this direction. A 24×7 digital counterpart that handles work in the background, quietly and persistently.

This changes company structure.

Organizations will downsize, not necessarily because business is shrinking, but because leverage increases. Fewer people can accomplish more. Capital efficiency becomes a competitive advantage. We will see companies scale with smaller teams and lower burn. At some point, we will likely see a single founder, single employee unicorn. That sounds extreme until you realize how many barriers AI removes.

The more interesting shift is what happens to individuals.

Jobs will become harder to find, especially generic ones. Roles defined by repetition or shallow decision-making will get squeezed first. At the same time, opportunity doesn’t disappear. It fragments. People will need to focus more on passionate projects that generate revenue. Not hobbies, but real businesses. Consulting. Products. Content. Advisory roles. Small portfolios instead of single titles.

That transition won’t be comfortable.

There’s also a quieter trend worth paying attention to. As AI becomes embedded everywhere, trust becomes scarce. Verification, provenance, authorization, and auditability start to matter more. Was this action approved? Was this output tampered with? Was this decision made by the right system? Entire new categories will form around answering those questions.

Regulation plays a role here too. Not just as a constraint, but as an accelerant. Compliance-driven innovation has a long history of creating markets. AI will be no different.

And despite all the automation, one thing doesn’t go away. Humans still need shared context. Alignment. Real conversations. Physical gatherings where strategy is debated and partnerships are formed. If anything, events and communities matter more when so much work becomes digital and autonomous.

We’ve seen this cycle before. New technology. Early skepticism. Overcorrection. Consolidation. Then quiet, lasting impact.

The names change. The mechanics evolve. The pattern stays familiar.

The recognition isn’t reassuring. It’s clarifying. We’ve watched these cycles unfold before, but never with tools this capable or consequences this widespread.

Aside from his role as CEO of TMC and chairman of ITEXPO #TECHSUPERSHOW Feb 10-12, 2026, Rich Tehrani is CEO of RT Advisors and a Registered Representative (investment banker) with and offering securities through Four Points Capital Partners LLC (Four Points) (Member FINRA/SIPC). He handles capital/debt raises as well as M&A. RT Advisors is not owned by Four Points.

The above is not an endorsement or recommendation to buy/sell any security or sector mentioned. No companies mentioned above are current or past clients of RT Advisors.

The views and opinions expressed above are those of the participants. While believed to be reliable, the information has not been independently verified for accuracy. Any broad, general statements made herein are provided for context only and should not be construed as exhaustive or universally applicable.

Portions of this article may have been developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence, which may have contributed to ideation, content generation, factual review, or editing