Totally awesome conversation. Something my very brief experiences in Ukraine earlier this year absolutely reinforced to me was the observation y’all make about how imperative the act of getting technology deployed out on the edge where dudes can put it into action and figure it out really is. So, so, so often the guy best positioned to scope an application is the guy dealing with an urgent, pain-in-the-ass problem only he knows about and thinks to solve.
What stayed with me is that the real AI bottleneck may not be the technology at all, but the institutions around it. Having a powerful tool is one thing; redesigning an entire bureaucracy to actually use it is another.
"The way they bought it mattered" is the line from the U-2 story I'd underline, and Garrett's rate card vs fixed-outcome point is where it really bites.
A small European footnote from my own experience. The version I ran into wasn't a rate card, it was a direct award. This year a Finnish university direct-awarded an AI education platform on technical grounds: only one supplier could perform the contract and no reasonable alternatives existed. A €6,000 pilot with an option of up to €199,500. We asked for the market analysis, the requirement matrix and the list of alternatives they'd assessed. Each answer was that the document does not exist.
Conflict of interest, so discount me accordingly: my company, Midnight Forge Oy (Virtual Dawn), was the alternative supplier. We sent in a description of our own platform and it wasn't accepted as the right kind of "ready SaaS".
What struck me listening is that outcome pricing only works if someone is allowed to compare outcomes. If the requirements are written down and the market gets to answer, a genuinely unique supplier still shows up as the only one that qualifies. Skip that step and the "risk is on us" deal Garrett describes never even gets offered.
Totally awesome conversation. Something my very brief experiences in Ukraine earlier this year absolutely reinforced to me was the observation y’all make about how imperative the act of getting technology deployed out on the edge where dudes can put it into action and figure it out really is. So, so, so often the guy best positioned to scope an application is the guy dealing with an urgent, pain-in-the-ass problem only he knows about and thinks to solve.
Thanks for having me on and for the great discussion.
What stayed with me is that the real AI bottleneck may not be the technology at all, but the institutions around it. Having a powerful tool is one thing; redesigning an entire bureaucracy to actually use it is another.
"The way they bought it mattered" is the line from the U-2 story I'd underline, and Garrett's rate card vs fixed-outcome point is where it really bites.
A small European footnote from my own experience. The version I ran into wasn't a rate card, it was a direct award. This year a Finnish university direct-awarded an AI education platform on technical grounds: only one supplier could perform the contract and no reasonable alternatives existed. A €6,000 pilot with an option of up to €199,500. We asked for the market analysis, the requirement matrix and the list of alternatives they'd assessed. Each answer was that the document does not exist.
Conflict of interest, so discount me accordingly: my company, Midnight Forge Oy (Virtual Dawn), was the alternative supplier. We sent in a description of our own platform and it wasn't accepted as the right kind of "ready SaaS".
What struck me listening is that outcome pricing only works if someone is allowed to compare outcomes. If the requirements are written down and the market gets to answer, a genuinely unique supplier still shows up as the only one that qualifies. Skip that step and the "risk is on us" deal Garrett describes never even gets offered.
Van