Data Readiness, Learn by Building, and the Build-or-Buy Decision

01I think sometimes we lose sight of that when we buy technology and we build technology solutions. There's kind of a feeling that like, ⁓ you know, like it's working and ⁓ it'll keep working and and and I don't need to touch it. I feel like that that opening line for every one of them is this changes everything. So I'll let you talk on this one a little bit because I've I've peppered it throughout. But so how do all those three things relate to a mid market company who's just starting on this journey. one practical thing that companies should start doing to kind of tackle these issues. I think a big piece of it, I mean that there's two, right? I think that like when it comes down is the data, right? But what but not database data, right? Like this is this giant pile of everything stored in the cloud and I never throw anything away. Right. I I think that's what people don't understand. Like they and I and I'm stopping here again because the data is what you always hear. We've got to get our data ready for AI.

02We're not ready for AI because we don't have our data ready. They're not talking about your operational data warehouse that you've been using for twenty years. They're talking about all the other stuff that adds the color to that financial or operational data. I just want to be really clear on that distinction because that's what people mean. How do we get all the SharePoint version twelve, you know, sorted through? And I think one, having that either cleaned up, curated, or or marked, and then building systems, not just telling the LLM, go read all this stuff, right? And and try to help me out, but getting smart about ⁓ like the the systems that we built, we we tagged our data. Pretty specifically, and now we're learning that we need to do it a little bit more specifically, but right, conversations are an object but a human conversation and an LLM conversation, both valuable, but you know, need to be marked as such. So just in in layman's terms, like because you use the word object and yeah. You've no, no, it's okay.

03Yeah, I just I wanna make sure everybody kind of understands what we're talking about. So you've got to really decide how to categorize all of this data. And I think that is probably, you know, one of the biggest planning pieces that are hanging people up right now, which is well, how do I like Good catch. ⁓ What how do I model all this out and say, well, this is this and this I gotta put this in this bucket and this in this bucket and this in this bucket. And those buckets all have to be connected with a pipe. And so that's the that's the real issue that that we're trying to solve. And I think what people mean about the data. But you also had a second point. So I think we got stalled out there. It's related to that is like, so now, right, I mean you have to have clean information or or or a set of information, but then you need to also kind of ⁓ you know somehow start to establish like well what's authoritative in that information.

04⁓ you know, the files that are in SharePoint that your summer intern like uploaded are not necessarily authoritative documents, right? No. No, it was a it was a one off project that you had ⁓ do. Hopefully some good came out of it, but you only want the good. Right. So getting that and s and ta and and and figuring that out, I think though, I mean one of the things we've talked about before if I knew then what I knew now, would it change anything? Maybe, but I wouldn't want to. Like I like you know, like if I had the time machine and I could go back to January Veer and you know, with so w and and I and I couldn't give him stock tips. I would give I I w I don't think I would tell January Veer what some of the things I've learned because it would stop me from doing some of the things that were kind of emergent it with this technology where I was able to get value out of it. Right. And if I had if I if I knew certain things, I would have never done the project, right? So I think, you know, because and I think that's the the also kind of the the morning.

05and or encouragement to folks is like, you're gonna build these things. We're sharing with you that some of it, you know, maybe degraded over time or as as we added things to it, we had to rework certain parts of it. But along the way, it was valuable, like really valuable, not vanity project valuable. This was things that that drove real, like helped us on in our day-to-day work, helped us, you know, be more focused and engaged with our our our friends and family. ⁓ so part of it is is using it, you said earlier, like the the whole you gotta actually look at what it produces. And and then you know, if if if it starts to drift from being useful, you need you need to go ahead and accept the fact that things have changed and I need to go adjust, not ⁓ well, you know, like th this stuff is terrible and it doesn't work and it just and it and it and it flakes out over time. It it it it really hasn't. It's just the assumptions that you started with have have have materially changed as you've gone along the project. Yeah.

06I think the problem you just said though, I think what you were talking about where if I could go back to January and and let January Veer know what I know fully. would have shortcutted my learning, is what you were saying. Like you it would have shortcutted my deeper understanding of what's actually happening is playing out in every college history class across the country right now. And what everybody's freaking out about in education is everybody's shortcutting everything because all the knowledge that we have is already in there and on a very large scale, everybody's able to go back and tell their January self everything that happened for the last nine months. So I think that's another really key point here is is you really have to learn this. It is not a it's not a magic it's not magic. It's just an accelerant in my opinion. It's just a new way of working. I'm gonna keep saying that. It's a new way of working. It still requires a lot of human diligence.

07And if you really want to know it, if you really want to understand it and what's going on, and I think you want to in order to build some of the things we're talking about, y you have to put in the time and learn. You can't shortcut everything. No, no, you can't sit on the sidelines. See the last couple of podcasts or a couple of podcasts ago, I forget now, it's all getting blurry, where we talked to Justin Rae and he said, and we you know, we we spent a pretty good maybe five minutes talking about, hey, you gotta get reps, you gotta have that aha moment. And ⁓ I think that was a really good comment from him. Yeah. I think I mean, if we if we're you know, trying to wrap and put a bow on some part of this conversation, the conversation was us sharing the fact that like, hey, we built the things, we used the things, they needed maintenance, we had to put oil in the car, we had to you know, you you had no. No, I've got an electric vehicle now. I don't I don't need to put any oil in anything. I r I really like that too. You gotta put oil in the car.

08Sorry, I I your little I I would recognize My analogy. Okay, so right, right, right. ⁓ what I do know is that your car chews up tires. And so you gotta put tires on your car. Right? Those they're heavy and they chew up tires. So, right, you buy the car, you're gonna have to replace the tires at some point. And and I think sometimes we lose sight of that when we buy technology and we build technology solutions. There's kind of a feeling that, like, ⁓ you know, like it's working. Hundred percent true. And ⁓ it'll keep working and and and I don't need to touch it. ⁓ this you will, i especially if you're gonna like get the value out of it. i if you don't get the reps in, you're you're gonna not gonna learn these lessons. And ⁓ I mean we're just telling folks that you're just gonna be behind. At the enterprise level, yeah, that it it is is it a slam dunk? No. And I think anybody who's telling you it's a slam dunk of, you know, just, you know, slap ⁓ copilot or any other product in there and and ⁓ it will figure it out. ⁓ It'll figure something out. Right.

09I mean, I like well, I mean, you know, I don't feel like people are lying to you, but I think once you start really using the tools, you'll figure out really quickly that, ⁓ right, when it comes to nuance, if you don't invest the time, the the nuance is gonna get killed. So build it or buy it. Like what like if you were gonna build a second brain or if you were gonna build a brain, let's just sit call it that, for your company. You're the CEO of a three hundred and fifty million dollar middle market retail operator, you know, selling whatever widgets you're selling. Do you build this or do you go find I mean there's a lot of companies out there right now that are trying to build these for ⁓ you know, for organizations, for enterprises. Do you build it or do you go buy it?

10That one's a harder question than I think, you know, you and I, we work with a lot of of companies, especially in in like the private equity side, where, you know, you really try to push people away from making investments that aren't aligned to, you know, their exit and their, you know, their their thesis, right? And so, you know, like it's not always a great one-word answer for it, right? Because it kind of yeah, it depends. If you're going to do Either you're gonna have to invest in ownership, right? I mean, like this is the piece where there's somebody who has to the that to be both a champion to say that, hey, this is how we're gonna do business and this is the new cool tool. And then you have to identify ⁓ I was talking to a fellow the other day. He called them the pioneers. Find the pioneers in your ⁓ in your business, right? And and that are gonna be out there, you know, like you know, working their way west and ⁓ and ⁓ using the tools. I think there's so much value in this kind of brain type work.

11I think it comes down to like can you then identify what those use cases are that that the brain will help with, right? There's big company stuff. I have a friend who's doing a project w with a ⁓ direct to consumer, you know, they they the ⁓ consumer goods where they have a big call center and and they've been in business for, you know. 30 years. And so they have tons and tons of product data. They've got YouTube videos and out there about how to, you know, use their products and and and modify them and and all this stuff. It's a great, you know, example of like you have so much content. You you the the if you could synthesize this well, you could serve your people very, very well. You could serve your customers well, you could serve your ⁓ internal support teams well. And Right. I mean, the the unlock for some of these companies is is using that information, can you get that upstream to product development and engineering of, you know, trends and things that they maybe hadn't, you know, considered, right?

12That that all this large data is is gonna allow them to uncover and being able to retrieve it smartly, right? Not pull back, you know, ⁓ well, that was a problem with the nineteen ninety-seven model of ⁓ of of that widget, ⁓ doesn't you know, w we haven't we haven't made it in twenty years. I I totally I totally get that. So yeah, I think I think the ⁓ the build versus buy is very dependent upon where you are in the maturity curve, how close you are to exit. If you're a you know, if you're at a private equity backed venture-backed company, how close are you to the next round? How close are you to exit? I think that's a big decision that comes to play into play at this point because these systems are popping up everywhere. And so if you're if if you're twelve months away and they're already starting the sales process, then yeah I think buy is probably, you know, if I'm the CFO, I'm probably leaning towards buy pretty heavily. If it has to be, if it was part of You know, a refined because it's all happening so fast. Part of a refined thesis.

13Well, buy is is is is i it it allows you to to justify risk, right? I mean, 'cause you're offloading some of the risk to your partner vendor. Yeah. It's yeah. This is gonna not land with everybody, but it's kind of It's kind of like dot com or Zapier. Because and it's in Aiden is the better example. So inate in, you build everything from scratch, highly customizable. You go get the data from you name the other software and connect it to this other software, but you have to build all of the connections versus Zapier. I think it's Zapier, right? It's not Zapier. It's Zap. It is zappier, yeah. Yeah, it does zaps, exactly. So but those zaps, like you're saying, they're all managed by Zapier. You know, the connections that you're creating are all managed by somebody else. So you've pushed all that risk off to Zapier of managing those connections. So you don't wake up at two in the morning and find out a pipeline you build broke. Right.

14There's a durability with buy, right, that you don't get with build with with build if if especially if it's not your competency, right? If you're not a you know, a tech enabled, you know, l large larger, you know, tech ⁓ savvy like organization. Yeah, and then the last thing I would say, this is my last comment is is as a little teaser, I really want to talk about, you know, the maturity curve in one of our upcoming podcasts, because you're exactly right. You know, you talked a couple of times about do you have the power user, you know, somebody that's the term I think most people identify with. Do you have an AI power user on staff and how many? And if you don't, well, where do you start? in your journey that there's some key steps and I I'll just, you know, a little it's not a little cliffhanger, but there's some key steps that if you skip, I'm seeing it in real life, you won't you won't get as good of results. And we also have a guest coming up soon that I think might be able to, you know, talk a little bit about this.

15So I think all that to say you have to put in the work. ⁓ right. I I think we've all you know we we we we've been real clear telling folks that we've told folks, you know, getting the reps in is important. The reality is is that you're going to spend time going back and reworking stuff. ⁓ I think it's exacerbated by the fact that this is like emergent and like these models and releases and the like the space is moving so quickly that it creates even more churn in in the work. But at the same time, there's incredible value that we see for ourselves and our clients and and for folks out there. And you know, don't be put off by the raccoons in the trench coat. No, and d there are going to be raccoons. I think we should probably provide just kind of high level, you know, idea of what open brain is in somewhere in the comments, you know, maybe just one PDF that shows what the whole thing looks like, just to remind everybody.

16And then, you know, the three big issues we talked about, ⁓ You're gonna have to maintain this from a security standpoint and infrastructure standpoint, things are gonna break. Now you own it. If you build your own brain, you're gonna have to determine the search tools that you wanna use. And then as your scale increases, the amount of data increases, you're going to have to rethink both one and two. I think that's the for me that's the big takeaway. Man, this was good, Veer. I appreciate I I mean, like this was this was good. I think, you know, hopefully it's an honest look. I know that, you know, it's a little heady for some folks, but if you're playing with this, you're gonna st you're gonna be and you're interested in this, you're either gonna lean in and and learn a little bit here, or you're gonna be right in lockstep with us if you've if this is already a path you're on. And hopefully this gives some Clarity around what we're seeing and what you're I think necessarily gonna see yourself. Yeah. So, you know, we've got guests coming up. We've got other topics.

17We'll talk about maturity. I think ⁓ we'll talk about this open brain is one piece of I think the the kind of the more emergent thing for executives and knowledge workers that people I think are talking, you know, gaining traction is right personal operating system. Right. And this is a a piece of what you can build for yourself. Because nobody's going to build it for you. And there's a lot, there's a little bit of if there's something that bothers you, there's a good shot that you could probably fix it. Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, I appreciate you, Veer. Thank you so much for the conversation. And ⁓ as always, you know, we are happy to have you guys here. We'd love to see comments down below. What could we go deeper on? What did we cover too extensively that you think we could cut out? We wanna we really want your feedback. Yeah. Yeah. I'm Veer. Jim and we are the functional Executive see y'all out there.