The turning point came in the last two years, when the company invested heavily in AI. I took it as a challenge. I learned everything I could, and because I already had coding experience, something clicked. I fell in love with it. I started building small projects of my own. And then it hit me: it was time to build something myself.

I’m starting this company with a lot of knowledge that’s been sitting on a shelf, ready to share. And the diplomacy background isn’t behind me at all, negotiation has been part of my work every single day. It turns out the thesis and the tech were never separate paths. They both led here.

I trained to negotiate between nations. I ended up negotiating something else: the space between what technology promises and what a business actually needs. Every company adopting AI is in a negotiation, whether it realizes it or not. With vendors, with budgets, with its own habits. My job is to sit on your side of the table. I understand the technology well enough to build it, and I understand negotiation well enough to tell you when to walk away from it. That is the whole philosophy. AI on your terms, not its own.