Adi chose a monorepo over the then-popular microservices architecture. This consolidated codebase made it significantly easier for AI agents to read and operate on, giving them a structural advantage years later when LLMs became viable.
Adi found the traditional OKR framework too heavy and complex, creating too many priorities. They replaced it with a single "North Star" metric, such as EBITDA, which became a powerful, simple organizing principle that focused the entire company's efforts and streamlined decision-making.
Adi counterintuitively began its AI agent implementation in the legal department, a high-stakes area with tight deadlines. By solving this complex problem first, they built robust data pipelines and systems that made subsequent rollouts in areas like customer service much faster and more effective.
Adi, a Colombian company, operates entirely in English. While this helps attract global talent, its non-obvious benefit is attracting top-tier local talent. The use of English signals a commitment to a global standard of excellence, which is a powerful draw for ambitious local professionals.
Adi's culture of documenting everything, from strategic memos to standard operating procedures, was established long before AI agents were viable. This practice inadvertently created a structured, explicit knowledge base, providing the essential context and data for AI agents to be successfully integrated into workflows.
Before mandating an AI transformation, Adi's CEO personally built his own AI stack from an empty cloud instance, including DevOps. This hands-on process gave him a deep, visceral understanding of the technology's potential and the conviction required to lead the entire company through the change.
Instead of just looking at regional peers, Adi's founder relentlessly pursued a meeting with the CEO of Kaspi, a highly successful fintech in Kazakhstan. This global analogue provided more valuable, counterintuitive lessons on strategy and product roadmapping than could be found by studying more obvious competitors in Latin America.
Adi's founder admits that if he knew as much about Colombian financial regulations as he did about the US system, he might never have started. A degree of "ignorance" about obstacles allowed him to focus on opportunity, whereas deep expertise can often lead to seeing only failure points.