Customers are hesitant to trust a black-box AI with critical operations. The winning business model is to sell a complete outcome or service, using AI internally for a massive efficiency advantage while keeping humans in the loop for quality and trust.

When a company adopts third-party software like Workday for HR, it's not just buying a tool; it's implicitly accepting that vendor's philosophy on how a process should be run, potentially limiting strategic flexibility.

To innovate quickly without being bogged down by technical debt, portfolio companies should ring-fence new AI development. By outsourcing it and treating it as a separate "skunk works" project, the core tech team can focus on existing systems while the new initiative succeeds or fails on its own merits.

The true enterprise value of AI lies not in consuming third-party models, but in building internal capabilities to diffuse intelligence throughout the organization. This means creating proprietary "AI factories" rather than just using external tools and admiring others' success.

The choice between open and closed-source AI is not just technical but strategic. For startups, feeding proprietary data to a closed-source provider like OpenAI, which competes across many verticals, creates long-term risk. Open-source models offer "strategic autonomy" and prevent dependency on a potential future rival.

Instead of large, multi-year software rollouts, organizations should break down business objectives (e.g., shifting revenue to digital) into functional needs. This enables a modular, agile approach where technology solves specific problems for individual teams, delivering benefits in weeks, not years.

If your team lacks development expertise, don't hire an agency to build a complex SaaS. Instead, build a simpler product that aligns with your skills, such as a no-code app or a small utility. This approach avoids unmanageable technical debt and agency dependency.

When engineering teams claimed they could build a solution themselves, Nexla's founder agreed. He then reframed the problem not as a one-time technical challenge, but as an endless, repetitive maintenance task that was not a "career growing trajectory" for talented engineers, making the "buy" decision a strategic move for the engineering manager.

Building proprietary internal tools is a 'dumb thing to do when you're small, but it's the smartest thing to do as you scale.' Deel's CEO advises waiting until the company is on a clear path with strong, profitable growth. At that point, investing in custom infrastructure like a proprietary ticketing system becomes a strategic advantage that unlocks significant long-term efficiency.