Where this came from

Dirk named the thesis

"The one gap that I have is operational intelligence. Everybody talks about AI — utilising it operationally, at ground level, is where nobody is looking. And you don't need to be a huge player to be there. Everybody else is focused on the process. It's the user interface, that simple guy who goes out and needs to replace a fuse in the box at your house." Dirk

He'd tried an adjacent version of this at HCL, and his own verdict on why it didn't land: "that was before AI, and doing it was clunky." The problem hasn't changed. The cost of solving it has collapsed.

What a technician can't record

Dirk, on why the job detail matters:

"That job — how many hours, what have I done? It's not just 'I spent 10 hours.' What did you do in that 10 hours? Well, I replaced this and this. Here's the part I used."

Without that, the invoice can't be justified, the customer queries it, and payment slips.

Two buyers, different interests

The technician wants to finish and leave; he does not care about the system. The owner wants the job card signed and the invoice out: "I want to be able to invoice that guy and get paid as soon as possible." Both have to be satisfied or the thing fails.

One step up from the smallest guy

"There are a lot of solutions for the small guy. But the guy one step up, integrated — that's where it is." Dirk

Companies around $2–3 million in revenue. Big enough to feel it and pay for it, small enough that nobody serious is building for them. This is also Albert's market, which is why he matters to the team rather than being a nice-to-have.

Sell a package. Let them choose how to pay.

"It's all about the package. You want to sell it in a package. You pay me — that's the amount you get for us to service you."

Two models, offered side by side: deliverables-based for buyers who want to see something finished, and outcomes-based for buyers who'd rather we carried the risk. Dirk on why the second one is worth offering:

"My incentive is to make you succeed. Because the more success you have, the more money I make."

Eduardo: "You create enough alignment and the whole machine becomes a flywheel." Dirk already runs this shape with referral partners — "whatever percentage of zero is zero. The more they bring, the more they earn."

Thin front end, deep integration

The capture app is the easy part — photos, parts, hours, signature. The hard part is the integration into ERPs and QuickBooks, and that's the moat. Two more constraints from the call:

• Build agents, not applications. "You're not going to create a solution for every single team."
• Vision is the capture mechanism. Eduardo raised it — every technician carries a camera; photograph the part and let a model read it rather than asking a man with dirty hands to type.
• Free tiers to prove it, then AWS, Google Cloud or Azure at volume. Offer it managed, or built into the client's own cloud.

The positioning both of you landed on

"We're going to tell the shoemaker: focus on making shoes. We will help you run the business so you can make more shoes." Dirk — Eduardo's response: "Beautiful. Simple."

It works because it never mentions AI. The companion point, from Eduardo, on why the work is worth real money — someone had reminded him that AI can do a great deal now, "but you need to know how to operate it. It's a machine. And this is what we bring. We know how it works." The conclusion you both reached: don't undersell.

What you told each other to watch

• "It's easy to want to go too big too soon." Both agreed.
• "Put out three fishing rods, see which one bites, then score that one." Parallel small bets rather than one large commitment.
• Pick something scalable and repeatable — not a bespoke engagement that can't be productised.
• Field capture is the Trojan horse. Land there, expand into the back office — but the expansion needs a business case with a number: "this is what it's going to cost you."

The part that isn't strategy

Eduardo, on having left Google in November for family reasons:

"It's not about the money. If you're not excited to wake up in the morning and do stuff that matters, then why do it at all?"

And Dirk summarised it well. A line worth keeping:

"Passion and purpose. Passion without purpose, or purpose without passion — nothing works." Dirk

Next steps from the call