Recap: AI for Agencies, insights from the event and the podcast

Bing van Moorsel and Matthias Snoei were both guests at events hosted by De Verkenners. Bing, himself a member of De Verkenners, shared his view at the AI for Agencies event on how agencies can turn AI into concrete solutions. Matthias joined De Verkenners Podcast and went deeper into the same question: how do you turn AI experiments into a product that genuinely delivers value for customers?

Looking back on the event: AI for Agencies

In his talk, Bing described how his team built SaaS with an agency mindset. "We sold hours instead of subscriptions, tried to scale before there was real demand, and assumed an innovative product would sell itself. On top of that we underestimated pricing and spent a lot of time correcting misconceptions about AI with customers. These are lessons you won't find in a pitch deck, but they turn out to be crucial in practice."

Those mistakes led to insights as well.

"AI forces you to give your business model a proper rethink. SaaS and agency thinking ask for different ways of working, and anyone who ignores that difference gets stuck."

For Bing the most important lesson is this: focus on the business case, not on the tool. A prompt is not a product. Implementing AI is ten percent technology and ninety percent working out what is really needed.

In the end AI strengthened SWIS and brought them to different budgets and bigger questions. Not because they had the best technology, but because they learned to ask the right questions. That is exactly where the opportunity lies for agencies: help the customer get the problem clear before you start building. On a subject where so much information and opinion runs together, giving structure and direction may well be the biggest value an agency can add.

Looking back on the podcast: innovation born of urgency

In the episode of De Verkenners Podcast, host Fabian de Jong talks with Matthias Snoei. The conversation centers on the development of vragen.ai, the AI solution built inside SWIS. According to Matthias, real innovation almost always starts with urgency: "Without urgency, innovation stays non-committal and very little actually changes." The rapid rise of AI forces us to do things differently. vragen.ai came out of that necessity, as an answer to the arrival of ChatGPT and others. It solves a specific problem for our customers.

In the podcast Matthias also talks about the challenges that come with it, such as internal resistance, compliance questions 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 in agencies? Listen to the episode of De Verkenners Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. The podcast is in Dutch. Want to know more about the people behind vragen.ai? Read on at About us.