Retrospective on the event: AI for Agencies

During his lecture, Bing described how his team built SaaS with an agency mindset. “We were selling hours instead of subscriptions, trying to scale before there was real demand, and assuming an innovative product would sell itself. On top of that, we underestimated pricing and spent a lot of time correcting misconceptions about AI with clients. These are lessons you won't find in a pitch deck, but they prove to be crucial in practice.”

But those mistakes also led to insights. “AI forces you to properly review your business model. SaaS and agency thinking require a different way of working, and whoever ignores that difference gets stuck.” According to Bing, the most important lesson is: focus on the business case, not the tool. A prompt is not a product. AI implementation is ten percent technology and ninety percent figuring out what is actually needed.

Ultimately, AI strengthened SWIS and brought them to different budgets and larger challenges. Not because they had the best technology, but because they learned to ask the right questions. That's exactly where the opportunity lies for agencies: not just executing what a client asks, but helping to get the problem clear. Especially with a topic where so much information and opinions get mixed up, providing structure and direction is perhaps the greatest added value an agency can offer.

Retrospective on the podcast: innovation out of urgency

In the episode of De Verkenners Podcast, host Fabian de Jong talks with Matthias Snoei. This podcast focuses on the development of Vragen.ai, an AI solution developed within SWIS. According to Matthias, true innovation almost always begins with urgency. “Without urgency, innovation remains non-binding and very little changes in practice". The lightning-fast rise of AI forces us to do things differently. Vragen.ai was born out of that necessity. It is our response to the rise of ChatGPT, among others, and solves a specific problem for our clients.

In the podcast, Matthias also talks about the challenges involved, such as internal resistance, compliance issues, and the difficult process of scaling up.

Listen to the full episode

Curious about the whole story behind the development of Vragen.ai and the future of AI within agencies? Listen to the newest episode of De Verkenners Podcast via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.