Reality check question.
You both work in the European tech sector where advanced systems are the norm. When you looked ‘under the hood’ of your parents’ business, you mentioned being shocked by the amount of manual work. Can you walk us through that specific moment of realization? What was the one process you saw that made you say, ‘We have to fix this right now’
I don’t think there was a specific moment of realization per se. Our parents knew that they could use tech to improve their work, but it was hard to understand where to start. We first tried out new business directions where we made ‘loyalty programs’ for their business, then for smaller local businesses but it wouldn’t really click. Clients wouldn’t really go for the extra effort to get some small cash back on an obscure service. Even if it was a Telegram bot, people just use WhatsApp. Some faults can also be attributed to lack of experience back then.
Next pilot was making a “Dispatcher” event delivery system,
AI readiness question.
The title of our session asks how to be ready for AI when systems run on paper. Many businesses think they can jump straight from paper to Artificial Intelligence. Based on your experience with this project, is ‘boring’ automation—like the simple scripts you wrote—a mandatory prerequisite before a business can even think about AI? Or can you skip steps?
My take is that you need to begin to collect data. Just, start collecting data. There’s so much hype around AI, controlling and taking over the work, but to be honest what people lack a lot is strucutre and business processes developed.
Human element.
A common fear is that automation removes the need for people. You mentioned that instead of quitting, the business stakeholders (your parents and their team) shifted to other tasks. How did you manage that transition with them emotionally and practically? How did you convince them to trust a script over the manual work they had done for years?