Let me be honest: for a long time I only built. Writing looked like time I did not have, and like opinion I owe nobody. That has changed. Not because I suddenly feel like LinkedIn. But because I noticed that for years I have been writing down what I learn, and then it sits in a drawer where it helps nobody. And because something is happening right now where that experience could help someone.
For a long time I only built
Whoever reads this blog from the back sees what I mean. A fridge that knew what was inside. A model that recognised plants in the garden in 2020. An app that scans rooms, with tracking we wrote ourselves. A museum in the browser. A catapult game where we computed every angle for a year. Plus banks, telcos, order processes, fifty micro models, agents that never sign off on their own. And for a few years now: teams and companies that I bring into the world where you build with AI.
All of that was workshop. Make, fail, make again, ship. I never wrote about it. I thought whoever builds does not have to talk. And I thought that those who talk a lot have mostly built little.
The second I still think. The first was wrong.
The diary
Because I did write anyway. Just not for others. For years I have kept a diary. Not what you imagine, no feelings, no weather. But sentences that came up in a call, at the whiteboard, after a mistake at 11 pm. What a client said before a project tipped over. Why a model did not work although the numbers were good. How a team reacted when the first agent wrote code. How a budget came about that nobody understood.
I have gathered a lot. More than I thought when I started sorting it last year. And while sorting I noticed something: most of the sentences are not about technology. They are about decisions. When to start. What to rebuild first. Whom to bring on board. What to tell a team before it gets scared. And almost all of these sentences I could have used ten years earlier, from someone who had already done it.
The inevitable
And here is the real reason I am writing now.
Fact is: AI is coming to almost every company. Not as a chatbot on the website, but where it hurts and where it pays: in the processes and in development. Orders that an agent checks before a human sees them. Code that to a large part is no longer written by hand. Documents that are read and sorted without anyone opening them. I consider that inevitable. Not because I wish for it, but because I have seen it in every project for two years, at banks, at telcos, at twenty-person companies.
And I see something else: most are not prepared. Not because they are stupid. But because nobody told them what it concretely means. That the data has to be clean before a model can do anything with it. That a team that gets an agent needs different rules than a team that has none. That you start small, with one process, not with a strategy. And that the difference between companies that come through this well and those that do not is not the technology. It is the preparation.
The business angle from the workshop
What I offer is a point of view. A business angle, if you want to call it that, and one that comes from the workshop.
Most people who help companies with AI come from one side. From consulting, then there are slides, a strategy, a target picture, and nobody who knows whether the thing can even be built that way. From technology, then there is a model that works, and nobody who knows how it gets into a process that twenty people have done the same way for ten years. Each side lacks the other.
I have done both. I come from the workshop: I have built models, written tracking, set up agents, code that still runs on Steam today. And I have been running my own companies for thirty years, in Switzerland and in Dubai. I have paid salaries, lost clients, won clients, led teams through changes nobody wanted. I know how a model is converted, and I know how it feels when a team is slower for two months after a change before it gets faster.
Who I want to help
People and companies who want to get further with their experience, toward the inevitable. That sounds big. Concretely it is three groups.
Companies that know it is coming and do not know where to start. Twenty to two hundred people, a core business that works, and the question: where do we start without breaking everything? That is where I help the most, because it is exactly the question I had to answer with my own companies.
Teams that got an agent and do not know what now. Developers who suddenly review instead of write. A lead who does not know how to lead the team when half the code no longer comes by hand. I have done that, several times, and it works if you settle a few things beforehand.
People with an idea, before the implementation. Founders, developers with a weekend, someone from a completely different industry who has seen something. Before building, when you can still decide what comes first. That is where a sentence from experience is worth the most.
What all three are missing is not motivation and mostly not money either. It is someone who says: I did this, this is how it turned out, and this is what I would do differently today. Not as a talk. As a conversation, at the table, with your own thing in front of you.
What I can offer, and what not
Preparation, not strategy. I look with you at where your data lives, which process pays off first, what your team needs before the first agent arrives. That is not a slide. That is an afternoon at the table and afterwards a list you can work through.
The workshop view. Whether you need your own model or whether an existing one is enough. Whether the data is clean enough. Whether what stands on the slide can even be built that way. The questions I answered wrong a hundred times before I answered them right.
The entrepreneur view. How to lead a team through a change it did not want. How to explain a budget nobody understands. When to stay small and when to grow. What runs differently in Switzerland than in Dubai. That too I got wrong often enough.
What I am not. Not a fund. Not a consultant with a target picture and an hourly rate. Not a networking person who opens doors and is then gone. I am someone who sits down, looks at the thing, and says what he sees. From the workshop, with thirty years of company behind me.
How this blog works
This blog is not a content plan. It is the diary I keep anyway, only that others may now read along. Unfinished, concrete, no gloss. The projects from before, told honestly, with what I would do differently today. The things of now, AI, agents, teams, Dubai, Zurich, as they happen. And in between the sentences that came up in a call and that someone might need who is standing right before their change.
And because the question comes anyway: yes, a model helps here. Our own, a twin model trained on my texts. It corrects grammar and spelling, nothing more. The thoughts, the values, the learnings, the mistakes, the projects that went wrong: all of that is mine. No model built SKIMO, computed catapults for a year or sat in Dubai in February. Sometimes a stumble stays in the text. Then that is mine too. I write this under every article so that it is clear before anyone asks.
Whoever only posts without having built has nothing to say. Whoever only builds without writing does not explain himself, and helps nobody who comes after him. I am now trying both. Irregularly. But honestly.
For a long time I only built and wrote for myself. Now I write for those who want to be prepared when AI comes into their processes and their development. Because it is coming. From the workshop, with thirty years of my own company, without slides. If you want to get further and want to know how something like that turns out: write to me. That is the reason for this blog.
Written by me. The thoughts, the values, the learnings, the mistakes: all mine. Grammar and spelling are corrected by our own twin model, trained on my texts. Sometimes a stumble stays in. That is mine too.