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E 777 — Digital Sovereignty After the AI Export Order · Deep Tech Germany – AI, Robotics & Frontier Innovation by Startuprad.io™

• 0:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: What happens to SaaS when custom software becomes cheap enough for small and medium-sized companies?
• 0:08
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: In part one, we talked with Delia Hallberg of Amadeni AI
• 0:14
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: about the operational reality inside Mittelstand SME companies.
• 0:18
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Broken processes, fragmented tools, manual workarounds, and AI projects that only
• 0:24
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: create value when the underlying work is understood first.
• 0:29
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: In part two, we go deeper into the market tensions.
• 0:35
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: If an AI lowers the cost of building software,
• 0:40
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: does the future belong to better SaaS platforms or to custom
• 0:46
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: systems built around the way companies actually work?
• 0:50
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Welcome back to Startuprad.io.
• 0:52
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: This is part two of our conversation with Delia Hallberg, co-founder and CEO
• 1:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: of Amadeni AI, a company building AI-supported custom software for small and medium-sized enterprises—the German Mittelstand.
• 1:08
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: In part one, we looked at the practical side, how Amadeni analyzes workflows,
• 1:16
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: where AI automation creates measurable relief, and why bad processes plus
• 1:22
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: AI can become bad processes on steroids.
• 1:26
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Now we turn to the strategic question.
• 1:30
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Delia argues that SaaS, as we know it is under pressure
• 1:36
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: because the cost of code has collapsed.
• 1:40
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: If custom software can be built faster, cheaper, and closer to
• 1:46
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: the actual operating model of an SME, then the old trade-off changes.
• 1:53
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Companies may no longer have to choose between rigid, off-the-shelf tools and unaffordable custom development.
• 2:01
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: In this second part, we ask which SaaS products are vulnerable,
• 2:07
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: when SaaS still wins, how German SMEs think about data ownership and GDPR,
• 2:14
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: and why model-agnostic AI architecture may become a serious European business requirement.
• 2:21
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Delia, before the break, we left listeners with one unresolved tension:
• 2:27
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: experienced developers still matter, but AI agents now produce more and more of the software.
• 2:35
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Where does engineering craft end and agentic software in production begin?
• 2:42
  Delia Hallberg: Hi, Jörn.
• 2:43
  Delia Hallberg: Thank you.
• 2:44
  Delia Hallberg: It is great to be back.
• 2:47
  Delia Hallberg: I would say, the developer's role has changed into that of
• 2:53
  Delia Hallberg: an IT department head, and your agents are your team of,
• 3:00
  Delia Hallberg: programmers that you orchestrate
• 3:02
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: And they will never complain to HR.
• 3:05
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: I see.
• 3:06
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Maybe there will be a department for agents in the future.
• 3:12
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Delia, when you say SaaS as we know it will no
• 3:18
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: longer exist in its current form within a year,
• 3:23
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: what specifically do you expect to break first?
• 3:27
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Pricing, implementation, lock-in, customization, or distribution?
• 3:30
  Delia Hallberg: I think the SaaS market is very rapidly changing,
• 3:35
  Delia Hallberg: and that's why we are becoming more relevant for a lot of Mittelstand and SMBs.
• 3:42
  Delia Hallberg: Something that would have been completely beyond Mittelstand budgets five years
• 3:48
  Delia Hallberg: ago is now a very plausible alternative.
• 3:52
  Delia Hallberg: What I observe among my clients is that SaaS rigidity creates a lot of frustration.
• 4:00
  Delia Hallberg: SaaS forces you to adapt your workflows to the software.
• 4:05
  Delia Hallberg: Especially, for example, for niche SMBs, that trade-off has become very
• 4:10
  Delia Hallberg: painful and has a structural impact on day-to-day operations.
• 4:15
  Delia Hallberg: In the past, they had to live with it because there were no alternatives.
• 4:22
  Delia Hallberg: CEOs and managing directors are also reading and following what is
• 4:28
  Delia Hallberg: happening in the AI and IT world, and they are understanding
• 4:34
  Delia Hallberg: that they are no longer locked into living with these process inefficiencies.
• 4:40
  Delia Hallberg: I mentioned earlier the example of the engineering firm that had
• 4:46
  Delia Hallberg: been asking its SaaS provider for over a year to implement
• 4:52
  Delia Hallberg: one controlling feature which didn't get implemented and that was really the breaking point where
• 5:00
  Delia Hallberg: they said, "Okay, we're going custom." A second thing that I'm
• 5:07
  Delia Hallberg: observing with my clients is the pricing.
• 5:11
  Delia Hallberg: Because let's be frank about it code costs have dropped, but SaaS licenses haven't moved.
• 5:21
  Delia Hallberg: That is a mental divide that a lot of CEOs and
• 5:28
  Delia Hallberg: managing directors are beginning to recognize.
• 5:31
  Delia Hallberg: At the same time, the lifespan of tools has gotten incredibly short.
• 5:39
  Delia Hallberg: SMBs are sometimes locked into contracts of 12 months or longer.
• 5:46
  Delia Hallberg: They pay a high price while living with inefficient processes.
• 5:53
  Delia Hallberg: If, on top of that you have no access to your
• 6:00
  Delia Hallberg: data because of a non-existing API, that is a very clear
• 6:05
  Delia Hallberg: case where our clients have usually said farewell to their SaaS.
• 6:11
  Delia Hallberg: And I think that's putting a lot of pressure on the SaaS model.
• 6:18
  Delia Hallberg: So just to add, horizontal tools will stay.
• 6:22
  Delia Hallberg: Everybody needs an email service, everybody needs a browser.
• 6:27
  Delia Hallberg: Those will remain.
• 6:28
  Delia Hallberg: But the vertical, like highly industry-specific SaaS solutions are under serious pressure.
• 6:34
  Delia Hallberg: That's what I observe
• 6:37
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Yeah, there there are some areas of SaaS really under huge pressure,
• 6:43
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: and I was just talking to an entrepreneur who works in regulated SaaS.
• 6:50
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: He said he was not too concerned, but he would be
• 6:55
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: very concerned if he were in a non-regulated
• 7:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: area.
• 7:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: But let us return to the SaaS products here.
• 7:06
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: What kind of SaaS product is actually most vulnerable to AI-built custom software?
• 7:15
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Is it something,
• 7:17
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: is old?
• 7:18
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Is it something that is made by a vibe coder in a weekend?
• 7:26
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Or what is it?
• 7:29
  Delia Hallberg: So something built by a vibe coder over a weekend is not really SaaS.
• 7:38
  Delia Hallberg: That's a prototype.
• 7:40
  Delia Hallberg: I genuinely hope that nobody is using that for critical processes.
• 7:47
  Delia Hallberg: If you do, we are always open to fixing that.
• 7:54
  Delia Hallberg: SaaS solutions in heavily regulated industries are relatively safe.
• 8:00
  Delia Hallberg: SaaS solutions that try to target a very broad group of customers,
• 8:06
  Delia Hallberg: I would say these are the most vulnerable because they fit
• 8:11
  Delia Hallberg: everyone and nobody at the same time.
• 8:15
  Delia Hallberg: But then again, it comes to product management, right?
• 8:19
  Delia Hallberg: And I would say the least vulnerable are the ones that are adaptable.
• 8:26
  Delia Hallberg: That is not connected to age, but to how much the
• 8:32
  Delia Hallberg: SaaS has been evolving with time.
• 8:35
  Delia Hallberg: We have clients, for example, that have used their solution for
• 8:40
  Delia Hallberg: eight years but the provider has gone through waves of transformation
• 8:46
  Delia Hallberg: and remains close to its clients.
• 8:49
  Delia Hallberg: They listen, evolve, have open interfaces.
• 8:52
  Delia Hallberg: I would say these are generally fine.
• 8:55
  Delia Hallberg: We have other clients whose prices increase monthly,
• 9:00
  Delia Hallberg: and they have not received a new value-based feature in the past years.
• 9:07
  Delia Hallberg: I would say that is more vulnerable.
• 9:10
  Delia Hallberg: And I would say the ones that are least vulnerable are
• 9:16
  Delia Hallberg: those that serve niches, that understand their clients and their problems very well,
• 9:24
  Delia Hallberg: that serve that specific problem.
• 9:26
  Delia Hallberg: So I would say the future is really the more you serve a niche,
• 9:34
  Delia Hallberg: the safer you are, and the more adaptable and the more
• 9:40
  Delia Hallberg: attentive you are to your market, to your customers, the safer you are.
• 9:47
  Delia Hallberg: And obviously pricing.
• 9:49
  Delia Hallberg: Acceptance of legacy pricing is declining significantly.
• 9:52
  Delia Hallberg: But there are other ways where you can offer a fair solution to
• 10:00
  Delia Hallberg: your clients.
• 10:01
  Delia Hallberg: Yeah
• 10:02
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: We have talked about SaaS in general, but let us get more specific.
• 10:10
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Where is it structurally superior to custom software, even with AI-driven development?
• 10:18
  Delia Hallberg: I can tell you our carpenter clients generally do not have
• 10:25
  Delia Hallberg: anything unusual about their business model.
• 10:29
  Delia Hallberg: They are well served by solutions built for their trade.
• 10:35
  Delia Hallberg: So I would say that wherever companies have a standard business model,
• 10:43
  Delia Hallberg: where they have a good solution for their industry or for
• 10:50
  Delia Hallberg: their specific business model, that is where it is important to go for the
• 11:00
  Delia Hallberg: standard solution.
• 11:01
  Delia Hallberg: I would definitely not develop a custom solution because obviously the
• 11:06
  Delia Hallberg: provider has spent years working in a very specific industry and
• 11:12
  Delia Hallberg: understands the overall problems of the clients, not only that specific one.
• 11:18
  Delia Hallberg: They may have considered problems that we would not if we
• 11:24
  Delia Hallberg: design for a very specific customer.
• 11:27
  Delia Hallberg: It is also important to stress that custom software is an investment project,
• 11:34
  Delia Hallberg: so it takes time and resources, but it is also a co-creation process over weeks.
• 11:42
  Delia Hallberg: If I'm supposed or our team is supposed to create something
• 11:48
  Delia Hallberg: that is really custom for you I need to know how you work,
• 11:54
  Delia Hallberg: what is special about the way you're doing things.
• 11:59
  Delia Hallberg: Why
• 12:00
  Delia Hallberg: is an industry solution not working for you?
• 12:03
  Delia Hallberg: And let's be frank, that takes time.
• 12:07
  Delia Hallberg: That's why we always talk in ROI because we need a
• 12:12
  Delia Hallberg: strong business case to undertake that process.
• 12:15
  Delia Hallberg: And I would generally say, or the way I think about
• 12:20
  Delia Hallberg: it is that SaaS and custom aren't competitors and in a good case, they're complements.
• 12:27
  Delia Hallberg: My ideal situation is really where the SaaS solution, for example,
• 12:33
  Delia Hallberg: does 80% or maybe 70% of the most important processes of the client,
• 12:39
  Delia Hallberg: and then the client may have one specific process they handle differently.
• 12:44
  Delia Hallberg: And if then the SaaS has an API or open interfaces,
• 12:50
  Delia Hallberg: then we can create a small add-on to cover the last 30%.
• 12:55
  Delia Hallberg: And that's really my favorite way of addressing projects.
• 13:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: you already hinted at my next question a bit.
• 13:06
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: If a Mittelstand company has a closed SaaS stack from many years ago,
• 13:14
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: what is the switching threshold where replacing it becomes less risky than keeping it?
• 13:24
  Delia Hallberg: First, if workarounds have become load-bearing, if your office manager leaves
• 13:31
  Delia Hallberg: and nobody knows how reporting works, well, that's a very big business risk.
• 13:40
  Delia Hallberg: I also sometimes see that the system is blocking your next move.
• 13:48
  Delia Hallberg: Let's talk about a very simple case.
• 13:53
  Delia Hallberg: Langdock is, a GDPR compliant solution that has been growing
• 14:00
  Delia Hallberg: quite strong in Germany.
• 14:02
  Delia Hallberg: And I have a lot of clients coming to me saying, "Oh,
• 14:08
  Delia Hallberg: I cannot integrate my custom software with Langdock.
• 14:12
  Delia Hallberg: Can you help me build an API?" I have to say, "Sorry,
• 14:19
  Delia Hallberg: I cannot build an API for your custom software." And they really want to use Langdock.
• 14:27
  Delia Hallberg: They really want to create their own workflows, customize their agents, interact with their data.
• 14:35
  Delia Hallberg: But as I already said previously, there is no API,
• 14:40
  Delia Hallberg: there is no way to connect it to a solution such as Langdock.
• 14:47
  Delia Hallberg: The pain and frustration are growing.
• 14:50
  Delia Hallberg: What surprises me is when management continues paying for a product
• 14:56
  Delia Hallberg: in which the vendor has stopped investing.
• 15:00
  Delia Hallberg: Surprisingly, that is the reality for many industry solutions.
• 15:04
  Delia Hallberg: Clients feel and see that.
• 15:07
  Delia Hallberg: It is a simple equation.
• 15:10
  Delia Hallberg: The switching threshold is when the cost of staying exceeds the cost of changing.
• 15:17
  Delia Hallberg: By the time a company calls us, they have usually been
• 15:23
  Delia Hallberg: past that point for a while, and they are very happy to finally have a solution
• 15:32
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: I was wondering, looking at your website, it promises software that
• 15:38
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: belongs to the client, data stored encrypted in Germany, and GDPR-compliant development.
• 15:44
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: How much of that is a real buying criterion,
• 15:49
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: and how much is still only verbal comfort for cautious German buyers?
• 15:56
  Delia Hallberg: So if we would have had that
• 16:00
  Delia Hallberg: conversation 2023 or would have said it's more a thing of comfort and maybe data-privacy-loving Germans.
• 16:10
  Delia Hallberg: the world has really changed, and geopolitical developments are something that
• 16:17
  Delia Hallberg: comes up in a lot of sales conversations.
• 16:22
  Delia Hallberg: For example, now we have clients that say, "I want zero US services in my tooling.
• 16:32
  Delia Hallberg: I want to be able from one day to the next,
• 16:40
  Delia Hallberg: be completely independent of US solutions." That was something that came
• 16:47
  Delia Hallberg: up a year ago, for example, when the Greenland conflict appeared imminent.
• 16:54
  Delia Hallberg: I was saying, "Wow, that is good foresight."
• 17:00
  Delia Hallberg: Then June happened one month ago, when, for example,
• 17:04
  Delia Hallberg: the US government prevented new models from entering the market.
• 17:10
  Delia Hallberg: That is an example of geopolitical decisions having an impact on
• 17:16
  Delia Hallberg: the real tools that we use.
• 17:19
  Delia Hallberg: Sovereignty is now a concern everywhere, and I would say that
• 17:25
  Delia Hallberg: from the very beginning, were building our systems model agnostic,
• 17:30
  Delia Hallberg: but given recent developments and because we do not know what
• 17:36
  Delia Hallberg: the future will bring, it is essential.
• 17:40
  Delia Hallberg: It is not only verbal comfort; in the end, it's about business continuity.
• 17:47
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: I have to tell you from all the conversations I have
• 17:53
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: had about the US government deciding not to deliver certain models, during a
• 18:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: the restrictions specifically affected non-US users,
• 18:05
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: that sent ripples through the software world that we will still feel a decade from now.
• 18:13
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: I think a lot of people start to rethink,
• 18:18
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: which models their systems rely on.
• 18:21
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: But leave the geopolitics a little bit aside.
• 18:26
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: You already talked about model-agnostic architectures.
• 18:29
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: What would have to happen, maybe even geopolitically or commercially for
• 18:35
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: a client to actually need to swap models quickly?
• 18:39
  Delia Hallberg: June.
• 18:40
  Delia Hallberg: That is my answer.
• 18:42
  Delia Hallberg: June had to happen.
• 18:44
  Delia Hallberg: Yeah, I think, one security report, one government letter, and a model can be gone.
• 18:52
  Delia Hallberg: And I mean, in that case, were lucky that it was a new model,
• 19:00
  Delia Hallberg: So operations could not yet have been running on it.
• 19:05
  Delia Hallberg: But imagine a model being withdrawn that is already deployed.
• 19:10
  Delia Hallberg: Right?
• 19:10
  Delia Hallberg: So that's a geopolitical trigger, but then also commercial reasons, like price hikes.
• 19:17
  Delia Hallberg: I don't know where the future of AI pricing is going,
• 19:22
  Delia Hallberg: and I don't think that it's going to stay cheap as it is.
• 19:29
  Delia Hallberg: So that's also a strong trigger.
• 19:32
  Delia Hallberg: It is also very important that we try to use as
• 19:37
  Delia Hallberg: many European solutions as we can, obviously, when it fits the purpose and the quality.
• 19:45
  Delia Hallberg: but it is also important not to have a monopoly and
• 19:50
  Delia Hallberg: to always have alternatives to which you can switch,
• 19:55
  Delia Hallberg: and obviously also then to have the architecture to
• 20:00
  Delia Hallberg: be able to switch models in a model-agnostic way within hours
• 20:06
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: One of the interesting things is that you have partnered with organizational development experts,
• 20:15
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: and your pitch says some AI projects shake role definitions so
• 20:22
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: deeply that management conflicts can surface.
• 20:26
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: What is the operating rule for when you bring organizational development into the room?
• 20:34
  Delia Hallberg: I like to think of these large transformation projects where we
• 20:41
  Delia Hallberg: aim at an efficiency increase of perhaps 50 or 60 percent,
• 20:48
  Delia Hallberg: not as IT projects, but as organizational projects.
• 20:53
  Delia Hallberg: If perhaps half of the team suddenly has
• 21:00
  Delia Hallberg: time for new then obviously you're affecting the very root of how people work,
• 21:06
  Delia Hallberg: how they define their work, what they're doing on a daily basis.
• 21:12
  Delia Hallberg: And usually we bring an organizational-development expert into every project or
• 21:18
  Delia Hallberg: a change expert just in case something comes up.
• 21:23
  Delia Hallberg: We have had projects where we've introduced them at the beginning of the project.
• 21:30
  Delia Hallberg: The team was very clear, very structured.
• 21:33
  Delia Hallberg: It had good leadership, and then we never needed the change experts, which is totally fine.
• 21:41
  Delia Hallberg: But we also had projects where after two months,
• 21:46
  Delia Hallberg: we received a call from the managing director saying, "Yeah,
• 21:51
  Delia Hallberg: we're thinking about splitting up." In that case, tensions among three
• 21:56
  Delia Hallberg: managing directors had exploded because through that
• 22:00
  Delia Hallberg: really transformation project, it became clear who was doing what,
• 22:04
  Delia Hallberg: who was responsible for what, and then people had different understandings
• 22:09
  Delia Hallberg: of that where I was very happy to have already introduced
• 22:13
  Delia Hallberg: a change expert who already knew the customers, who had done
• 22:18
  Delia Hallberg: a little bit of work, who could immediately step in and mediate that conflict.
• 22:24
  Delia Hallberg: Because management teams splitting up is a huge risk for our project,
• 22:29
  Delia Hallberg: but were able to continue it within one week.
• 22:33
  Delia Hallberg: So to answer your question, we always include it from the start and,
• 22:39
  Delia Hallberg: if we don't make use of it it's fine, but it's good, to have them there.
• 22:46
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: I would also argue if you have three managing directors at
• 22:50
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: a customer and they split up, it is also a huge
• 22:55
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: risk for the company itself, not only for the project.
• 23:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: But let's talk a little bit about leadership ownership of AI transformation projects inside an SME.
• 23:09
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Who should ultimately own and be responsible for this AI transformation project inside an SME?
• 23:18
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Should it be the CEO, operations, IT, finance, or the frontline
• 23:25
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: team that actually feels the pain?
• 23:29
  Delia Hallberg: The CEO.
• 23:30
  Delia Hallberg: A very straightforward answer.
• 23:33
  Delia Hallberg: No, really, it is the CEO because we're talking about SMEs.
• 23:39
  Delia Hallberg: These are organizations with 20 to 250 employees.
• 23:44
  Delia Hallberg: That's definitely the CEO.
• 23:47
  Delia Hallberg: For major AI transformation processes, I am not talking about some
• 23:53
  Delia Hallberg: minor side process that we're automating.
• 23:57
  Delia Hallberg: I'm talking about the
• 24:00
  Delia Hallberg: big transformation process.
• 24:01
  Delia Hallberg: It touches processes, roles, budgets, and sometimes even identity.
• 24:06
  Delia Hallberg: It can be very fundamental.
• 24:09
  Delia Hallberg: So this has to be owned by the CEO,
• 24:15
  Delia Hallberg: and really our best projects have strong ownership among C-level managers.
• 24:21
  Delia Hallberg: But the frontline team obviously has to be in the room,
• 24:27
  Delia Hallberg: and they have to participate in it.
• 24:31
  Delia Hallberg: They are the ones who know how the work actually happens.
• 24:38
  Delia Hallberg: So we always bring the team together, and as I said,
• 24:44
  Delia Hallberg: the best projects combine strong CEO ownership of decisions with frontline-team ownership of feedback.
• 24:52
  Delia Hallberg: That's the combination that we need for successful projects
• 24:57
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: The CEO should own
• 25:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: the project, but how centralized should AI decision-making be in a company,
• 25:06
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: let's say a 200-person Mittelstand startup company before it becomes a bottleneck?
• 25:12
  Delia Hallberg: So I think you have two types.
• 25:16
  Delia Hallberg: You have these major transformation projects.
• 25:19
  Delia Hallberg: Obviously that's the one that I just elaborated, but you also
• 25:25
  Delia Hallberg: have a different type of AI adoption that is, for example, using agents,
• 25:32
  Delia Hallberg: using models to automate small parts of your daily work.
• 25:37
  Delia Hallberg: Here, I would say strategy has to be centralized,
• 25:42
  Delia Hallberg: but usage should be decentralized because the C-level decides where to
• 25:48
  Delia Hallberg: invest and sets the data policy and governance.
• 25:52
  Delia Hallberg: It is very important to have guidelines, but I would leave the daily AI
• 26:00
  Delia Hallberg: usage within these guardrails.
• 26:02
  Delia Hallberg: This should be as decentralized as possible.
• 26:05
  Delia Hallberg: Set the guardrails, then let the people run
• 26:10
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Hopefully you did not forget to set a very important guardrail
• 26:16
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: because it's always easy to say, "Ah, let's do this and
• 26:22
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: this and this." But asking whether you have thought about every possible scenario,
• 26:28
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: is challenging, especially when you have creative interns.
• 26:33
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: What is one operational belief that you had at the start
• 26:39
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: of Amadeni that a real client project has since disproven?
• 26:44
  Delia Hallberg: That's a good question.
• 26:46
  Delia Hallberg: So I think we started with a belief that there would
• 26:52
  Delia Hallberg: be a lot of nice-to-have projects.
• 26:55
  Delia Hallberg: What I just mentioned, small side process that's
• 27:00
  Delia Hallberg: been inconvenient, let's put it that way, and that automating them would make good projects.
• 27:07
  Delia Hallberg: That's something that we've learned is not the case.
• 27:11
  Delia Hallberg: The best projects are the ones where people genuinely feel the pain,
• 27:17
  Delia Hallberg: where we do not have to convince a team that digitalization is important.
• 27:23
  Delia Hallberg: If I have to start this conversation, it's already a red
• 27:28
  Delia Hallberg: flag and I totally accept that they have to go through a few learning curves.
• 27:35
  Delia Hallberg: The best projects are the ones where the pain is real.
• 27:40
  Delia Hallberg: The team has felt it.
• 27:43
  Delia Hallberg: They have already looked for alternatives, haven't been able to find
• 27:48
  Delia Hallberg: it and when they find us, it's a match made in heaven.
• 27:54
  Delia Hallberg: That is something we learned.
• 27:56
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Great.
• 27:57
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Now let us close with the
• 28:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: two typical questions here at Startuprad.io to learn a little bit about you and your company.
• 28:09
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Question number one, of course, are you open to talking to new investors?
• 28:16
  Delia Hallberg: For Amadeni AI itself, we are not raising.
• 28:20
  Delia Hallberg: We are intentionally bootstrapped.
• 28:23
  Delia Hallberg: What happens in our projects is that solutions sometimes emerge that
• 28:29
  Delia Hallberg: have the potential to become standalone products.
• 28:33
  Delia Hallberg: If it is a promising market, a promising product, then we spin those out.
• 28:41
  Delia Hallberg: And for those, we are open to talking to investors.
• 28:46
  Delia Hallberg: If somebody finds our philosophy interesting, it's definitely worth reaching out
• 28:53
  Delia Hallberg: and becoming part of our network
• 28:56
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Speaking of networks and people.
• 28:59
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Are
• 29:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: you looking for talented people right now?
• 29:03
  Delia Hallberg: With a large set of AI agents doing a lot of work,
• 29:09
  Delia Hallberg: we are reaching a natural bottleneck, I would say.
• 29:14
  Delia Hallberg: We are currently in a selective growth phase.
• 29:18
  Delia Hallberg: We are looking for consultants with great personalities, a deep understanding
• 29:24
  Delia Hallberg: of the SMB landscape, sound project and product-management skills, and a solid technical understanding.
• 29:31
  Delia Hallberg: Yes.
• 29:32
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Thank you very much, Delia.
• 29:35
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: It was a pleasure talking to you in two interviews.
• 29:40
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Actually, as we can tell our audience, we recorded four pieces.
• 29:45
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Last time, you had a bad cough, and we decided to completely redo everything.
• 29:53
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: We have now effectively made four episodes.
• 29:56
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: So thank you very much for
• 30:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: sticking with me.
• 30:01
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: To everyone watching on video, I am sorry, it's over 32
• 30:07
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: degrees Celsius here in my room and the lights don't help.
• 30:13
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: But for our audience, if an SME owner remembers one decision
• 30:20
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: rule from this conversation, what should they ask before spending money on AI?
• 30:27
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Should they ask, can we automate this, or do we understand
• 30:33
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: how this work should actually function?
• 30:36
  Delia Hallberg: Well, I would always choose the second.
• 30:40
  Delia Hallberg: "Can we automate this?" is a technology question.
• 30:45
  Delia Hallberg: And the answer is almost always yes.
• 30:48
  Delia Hallberg: You can automate almost anything today.
• 30:52
  Delia Hallberg: But the real question is: do we understand how this works?
• 30:58
  Delia Hallberg: It is process
• 31:00
  Delia Hallberg: first.
• 31:01
  Delia Hallberg: Do we understand how this work should actually function?
• 31:07
  Delia Hallberg: That's the important question.
• 31:10
  Delia Hallberg: Can we automate this?
• 31:13
  Delia Hallberg: Well, it's almost always a yes, especially nowadays.
• 31:18
  Delia Hallberg: But don't use process first as an excuse to wait.
• 31:24
  Delia Hallberg: Start today.
• 31:26
  Delia Hallberg: Look at where your team loses time every single day.
• 31:32
  Delia Hallberg: That's the money you're leaving on the table.
• 31:37
  Delia Hallberg: The companies that are looking at their processes and automating now are pulling ahead.
• 31:46
  Delia Hallberg: In today's competitive landscape, most SMBs can't afford to stand still
• 31:54
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Great.
• 31:54
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Last word: Most SMEs, most startups, most companies
• 32:00
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: can't afford to stand still.
• 32:05
  Jörn "Joe" Menninger: Thank you very much
• 32:09
  Delia Hallberg: Thank you